Best Practices in Recruiting: ERE Excellence Awards 2010 (Part 1 of 4)

From ERE.NET by Dr. John Sullivan Mar 29, 2010,
5:47 am ET

In a fast-changing world, organizations must stay abreast of trends
and best practices in recruiting and talent management. Unfortunately,
when economic downturns occur, many firms slack off on benchmarking and
assume that they will be able to catch up later. Conversely, the best of
the best take advantage of downturns as an opportune time to catch up,
develop a strategic plan, and advance their craft in ways laggards find
hard to emulate when demand spikes.

In my experience, there's no better way to identify the best firms
and their best practices in talent management than to examine the
accomplishments of the finalists and winners in ere.net's annual
recruiting excellence awards competition. Like in past years, this
year's participants have done some amazing things that are certainly
worth emulating.

Each year, applications for consideration in one or more of the
awards program's eight categories come in from all over the globe.
There is a good mix of large, medium, and smaller organizations, and a
wide cross section of industries represented. As one of the judges who
has evaluated entries since the award program's inception, I like to
conduct a deep analysis into what challenges participants are
addressing, and what innovations they are developing in response.

This four-part series will highlight some of the amazing practices
that earned organizations a spot as a finalist. While not all of the
practices described may be ideal for your organization, in general they
are practices that the judging panel finds indicative of world-class
recruiting in progressive talent management organizations.

As with all ere.net posts, you are encouraged to share your thoughts
on the practices described, ask follow up questions, and suggest
additional practices that elevate the game following each installment.

Best Practices in Employee Referral Programs

I have long argued that employee referral programs
should be the foundation of all external recruiting efforts, and across
the board most award nominees demonstrate why. A well-designed program
does much more than distribute sourcing responsibility
across an organization's workforce; it enables organizations to hire
better quality talent, faster, and cheaper than other recruiting
sources. Practices that differentiate the best programs from average
programs include extreme responsiveness, proactively seeking out
referrals, frequent program updates, use of robust metrics, and a focus
on prioritization of key jobs.

Award Winner - Aricent

Aricent, an 8,000-employee, privately held Silicon Valley-based
communications product and service provider operates in 19 countries
worldwide. It has developed a world-class employee referral program to
fuel growth and drive organizational capability. Outstanding practices
include:

• Responsiveness - Its dedicated team of five
  guarantees action on all referrals submitted within 72 hours of
  submission (it actually targets providing personalized feedback to
  referrers within the same time frame). Its referral help-desk also
  contributes to responsiveness by promising a response to all inquires
  within eight hours. The helpdesk is so well regarded that it achieved
  an astonishing 97.9% satisfaction rate among surveyed employees. This
  is truly a first-class approach. The No. 1 success factor in any
  referral program is its ability to maintain a high level of
  responsiveness. Almost all employee referral programs start out like
  gangbusters but quickly wane as employees realize that their referrals
  are not getting quick and responsive treatment.


• Service level agreement - Aricent developed a
  service level agreement that clearly spells out what referrers and
  hiring managers can expect from the ERP program staff and vice versa. Its
  SLA has produced the highest satisfaction rating of any program I have
  ever come across.


• Proactive referrals - Aricent used a proactive
  referral approach that took program representatives to employee
  workstations, meetings, social gatherings, etc., to educate about
  program specifics and to solicit on-the-spot referrals. It also
  publishes and distribute a referral program calendar in advance so that
  employees are aware of projected needs and events. In addition, at some
  of these referral events it provides on-the-spot rewards to solicit
  referral activity. This proactive approach might seem
  time-consuming, but it is one of the most effective ways to get
  referrals from ultra-busy professionals when you need them versus when
  other voluntarily opt to submit them. Traditional referral programs rely
  almost entirely on the employee making the initiative to refer in
  response to posters, e-mails, etc., which does little to ensure that the
  program produces needed results.


• Prioritization of jobs - The iRefer program is
  targeted to produce hires in hard-to-fill roles that require niche
  skills (50% of such roles were filled by ERP hires in 2009). By
  establishing hiring percentage targets for critical groups, Aricent made
  participation in the program by managers a priority as well, driving
  the program to produce 44% of all external hires, an increase of 9% over
  2008. Anyone who gathers data on referral program effectiveness
  finds out pretty quickly that referrals work better on certain jobs than
  on others. And because there are always limited resources, prioritize
  jobs and business units in advance so that the program focuses on
  mission-critical, revenue generating jobs, and "hard-to-fill" positions.


• Referrals are pre-assessed - Tackling the subject
  of "junk referrals," Aricent implemented a referral screening
  methodology that requires the referring employee to submit an assessment
  of the applicant being referred. By requiring employees to assess
  the technical skill and culture fit of the referral, the program forces
  the employee "to be accountable" for the quality of their referral,
  improving candidate quality and saving both manager and recruiter time.


• Goals for all managers - Aricent required all
  managers to refer at least one corporate alumni per year who they had
  convinced to return. It also involved hiring managers as iRefer
  ambassadors, which encourage their teams to refer profiles and to
  maximize their contribution during exclusive hiring events. Establishing
  referral targets or goals for each manager is a powerful method to
  drive participation.


• Boomerangs - It specifically targets former
  employees in order to get them to return later in their career.
  Sixty-six percent of all on alumni rehires came through the referral
  program in 2009. (Having a corporate alumni program and targeting
  former employees in order to get them to "boomerang" is especially
  important for organizations that may have been forced to lay off a large
  number of employees during the most recent downturn.)


• Use technology - Aricent developed a microsite on
  the firm's intranet which it uses to publish a list of employees who
  have successfully referred. It uses management software to generate a
  daily status report on every ongoing referral, and it tags each and
  every profile against one or more domains or skills, so that whenever a
  new position opens up, it can more quickly and accurately identify
  potential candidates in the referral database. To ensure easy access to
  the micro-site, it places iRefer kiosks at events and "short list"
  individuals on the spot.


• A dedicated referral team - Perhaps its most
  important accomplishment is the leadership of the talent acquisition
  team's ability to make a convincing business case to senior executives
  to fund a dedicated team of five to manage the employee referral
  channel.


• Bonuses - The Aricent program varies the bonus with
  the targeted position and offers "top-ups" as motivational bonuses on
  each of its unique campaigns.


• Robust ERP analytics - Aricent gathers and reports
  metrics in all of the important areas, including new-hire job
  performance, new hire retention, boomerang rehires, offer acceptance
  ratio, and referrals as a percentage of all hires. Analytics are the
  key to continuous improvement and for achieving a competitive advantage
  in any talent management program.


• Significant results were produced - Great features
  mean little if they don't produce results, and the Aricent program has
  no trouble demonstrating impact. Some highlights include: ERP hires
  have measurably better on-the-job performance than hires from other
  sources, and referral hires have measurably better retention rates after
  one year. These are the two most important metrics in any referral
  program because they demonstrate to skeptical senior managers that the
  program is producing higher-quality hires. Also: resume-to-hire ratio of
  3:1 compared to 5:1 of other sources; it increased the employee
  participation rate from 35%in 2008 to 66% in 2009; iRefer reached 45% of
  total hiring; ERP candidates accept offers at a significantly higher
  rate; and ERP hires cost approximately 20% less than hires produced via
  other sources.

Finalist - Accenture (Past ERE Award Winner)

This global consulting firm is well-known for excellent management
practices, and its referral program is no exception. The current program
began life as a pilot program in the Netherlands and received top
honors in last year's award program. Features that caught the judges'
attention last year (written up in the May 2009 Journal of Corporate Recruiting
Leadership) were senior executive involvement throughout the
program, electronic referral cards, a charity component that motivates
employees by providing a small donation to charity, and a reward for
referrals that successfully make it to the interview stage. This year
the program went global and was refined to better meet the changing
economic and recruiting climate. Major program improvements include:

• Prioritized positions - Accenture focused its
  program design changes on features that would improve the quality of
  hire, including moving away from open referrals to position-based
  referrals, where only high-priority positions are targeted. In an
  economic downturn, a firm's leadership should clearly explain why it's
  critical to continue providing referrals for some jobs, while the rest
  of your organization is in slow-growth mode.


• Authentic communications - Accenture realized that
  the wording and phrasing used in requisitions and position descriptions
  is much more formal than the language used in normal day-to-day
  conversation. As a result, it changed expectations to be more consistent
  with how friends/colleagues would discuss the role/organization. They
  then used senior leaders in their communication campaigns to be referral
  "champions" and to explain the importance to the business of the
  positions being recruited for.


• Increasing employee feedback - Accenture provides
  referring employees with more status information by allowing them to
  sign up to online feedback channels that let them monitor the status of
  referrals via emails, RSS feeds, and text messages. It also provided
  referring employees with access to their referral history, detailing
  status of past referrals, rewards earned, a targeted listing of key
  positions in their group that are soliciting referrals, and current ERP
  campaign messages.


• Tailoring the website experience - It learned by
  listening to feedback that past referrers do not need as much program
  information and support as "first-time" referrers. Using that learning,
  Accenture retooled the referral website to tailor the visitors'
  experience based on the visitors' past referral activity. Past
  referrers can jump straight to submitting a referral, while new referees
  are still provided with a high level of guidance and information.


• Results produced - Accenture started the year with a
  great performing program, but program retooling has made it even
  better. Key performance gains include: reducing the resume to hire
  ratio from 5:1 to 4:1; increasing the percentage of hires attributed to
  ERP to 34%; and estimated recruiting cost savings of over $700,000.

Both Aricent and Accenture have demonstrated an ongoing commitment to
servicing employees submitting referrals and are reaping the rewards of
paying attention. Got questions for either of them, comments,
concerns? Share them here and elevate the conversation!

Stay tuned: in part 2 of this series, I will cover the employer
branding program and corporate career website award categories.

In part two of this four part series covering the ERE Recruiting
Excellence Award winners, we'll take a look at how leading organizations
are positioning themselves via employer branding and
telling their story via their career websites.
Always popular categories, this year drew numerous applications as more
organizations realized the power of differentiating themselves in a
highly competitive labor market despite economic turbulence around the
world.

Best Practices in Employer Branding

Most activities in a modern-day recruiting function are operational
or tactical in nature, meaning that they are focused on filling talent
needs in the near term. One of the major exceptions to that rule is
employer branding, a strategic practice that involves managing the
perception of the organization among targeted talent populations to
attract top talent and foster engagement of existing top talent.
Branding works by understanding what attributes top talent truly desire
in an employer and communicating  stories and information that virally
spreads, demonstrating how the organization realistically delivers those
attributes.

Firms that engage employment branding well create a velvet rope
behind which top talent lines up for an opportunity to be considered for
employment/affiliation with the organization. The very best firms
approach employer branding as a science, using extensive metrics to
understand candidate perception and to target brand management efforts
to reposition the organization according to what is required to attract
top talent versus how those in HR or leadership desire the organization
to be portrayed. The efforts are always focused on key attributes - aka
brand pillars - and rely on portraying the organization in the best
"true" light, meaning that all branding points can be backed up with
examples of programs that deliver the brand systematically.

Both of the organizations highlighted this year do a great job at
looking at employer branding as much more than advertising and
recruiting collateral development.

Award Winner - Ernst & Young

As a global leader in accounting and advisory services, Ernst &
Young has a long history of excelling in many aspects of talent
management. Its efforts with regard to employer branding are no
exception. E&Y's brand focuses on telling a robust story about how
it helps professionals "Achieve Potential - Make a Difference."It has
been early adopters of using emerging communication and engagement
platforms and continues to experiment as new ways of sharing its story
emerge. Some key elements of its program include:

• A focus on brand pillars -Ernst & Young's brand
  focuses on establishing an industry-leading perception around four
  brand pillars that all relate to the opportunity for an individual
  applicant or employee to achieve their maximum potential. Its brand
  pillars include: opportunity, learning & development, an inclusive
  and flexible environment, and making a difference in the community.
  Brand messaging on these pillars is embedded in every candidate-facing
  communication. The identification of brand pillars is a foundational
  activity too many organizations execute half-heartedly, relying on
  generic attributes their organization isn't engineered to deliver.
  Establishing a great employer brand requires the organization to focus
  on key factors that not only influence a potential applicant to deem the
  organization highly desirable, but also factors that the organization
  can realistically provide.


• Best-Place-to-Work awards - Ernst & Young
  consistently ranks in numerous Best Place to Work award rankings
  including: Universum's #1 IDEAL Employer of U.S. undergraduates by
  business and accounting students; #3 on BusinessWeek's Best
  Places to Launch a Career; Top 3 in BusinessWeek's Top Places
  to Intern; Top 10 in Working Mother Magazine's Best Companies
  for Working Moms; and Top 3 in DiversityInc's Top 50 Companies for
  Diversity. Ernst & Young is the only big four professional services
  firm to be ranked on Fortune Magazine's prestigious "Best
  Companies to Work For" list for 11 years in a row. For many
  well-branded organizations, such awards are as much about auditing and
  refining their story as they are about garnering publicity. Applying
  for consideration and completing the application process forces
  organizations to ask questions about how they deliver on their brand
  promise that might otherwise not get asked.


• Touch point mapping - Using a customer service type
  model, Ernst & Young identifies or "maps" every critical
  interaction point with potential applicants and candidates to determine
  what activities and communications are needed to communicate the brand.


• Using social media - Even though it operates in a
  conservative industry, Ernst & Young has chosen to use the latest
  communication platforms to engage its large multi-generational audience.
  It uses video, micro-blogging, blogging, and Facebook to
  ensure that it communicates using channels the talent desires to use
  versus what might be easiest to support. With more than 35,000 Facebook
  fans in 2009, E&Y launched Connect2U, a Facebook application that
  includes an interactive events calendar and empowers students to connect
  directly with recruiters and vital career information.


• Personalized channels - Advanced employer brand
  messaging customizes the message so that it best fits the targeted
  audience. By moving beyond traditional advertising channels, E&Y
  reaches out to students (a significant portion of its target population)
  in ways that are uniquely meaningful to students. This
  mass-personalized messaging approach includes the development of a
  Pandora Streaming Radio Channel that plays songs selected by the 2009
  Sumer Intern Class. In addition, it also provides personalized channels
  for potential experienced hires. For example, it launched the EY
  Experience, an innovative online tool to communicate E&Y's culture
  and opportunities to potential candidates long out of college. This tool
  delivers dynamic, personalized content to experienced professionals
  based on users' responses to profile questions.


• An exciting corporate careers page - Its innovative
  Flexspace provides a virtual reality tour of employees' workspaces in
  order to communicate how work and personal responsibilities can work
  together. A supplementary printed brochure helps point students towards
  that online tool.


• Include an internal brand message - Its branding
  efforts focus not just on external populations, but also on existing
  employees as well. Reminding current employees about their "brand
  experience" can increase employee referrals, as well
  as help spread a credible message via social networks. Its internal
  branding efforts help employees understand how their work, energy, and
  enthusiasm contributes to the success they have with clients, the
  environment in which they work, and how together they can make a
  difference in the world.

Finalist - UnitedHealth Group

UnitedHealth Group is known to many in the United States, as it is
one of the largest health insurers and health system operators. Thanks
to its employer brand management efforts that focus on telling the story
of there being "Something Greater at Work Here," UnitedHealth is also
well regarded as an employer. Some key employer branding program
elements include:

• Identifying brand pillars - UHG conducted a series
  of focus groups and one-on-one interviews with employees, recruiters,
  and senior leadership to discover the most salient employer brand
  attributes among 75,000 employees dispersed across a multitude of
  individually branded facilities. This information, when categorized,
  help senior leadership better understand which brand pillars represent
  their strengths.


• Corporate careers website - It launched a new career site
  dedicated to painting a clear picture of the culture, diversity, career
  progression, and corporate social responsibility efforts of the company.
  It also embedded brand positioning statements in all print collateral
  including business development tools.


• Internal brand messaging - UnitedHealth launched a
  brand campaign around "There's Something Greater at Work Here." They
  used a variety of media including Town Hall meetings, teaser emails,
  infomercials, and the company intranet to articulate the new brand
  positioning internally.


• Results - The branding effort demonstrated
  significant measurable results including a 46% increase in the number of
  candidates who were knowledgeable about UnitedHealth Group's mission
  and values, and a 36% increase in the number of candidates who perceived
  UnitedHealth Group as an employer of choice.

Best Corporate Careers Website

Most corporate careers sites are boring, serving up little more than
generic content that can be found on nearly every other talent
competitor's site and offering no interaction of value except for an
incredibly painful online application. Great corporate career sites
break the mold and focus on both engaging and servicing prospective
talent. The very best take advantage of streaming video, social media,
mobile accessibility, online assessment, metrics for continuous
improvement, compelling and fun features, and personalized messaging
based on the interests of the visiting candidate.

Winner - DaVita

DaVita is the largest provider of outpatient and inpatient dialysis
treatment to patients suffering from end-stage renal disease or chronic
kidney failure. Recruiting medical specialists to staff more than 1,400
outpatient facilities and 700+ inpatient facilities is no easy task,
and DaVita has rose to the challenge with a level of strategic
aggressiveness few can match. Key highlights of its ongoing
best-in-class career website include:

• Extensive benchmarking - The benchmarking team
  audited half of the Fortune 500 career portals in order to learn best
  practices. It identified 12 features that DaVita should implement in
  2009, including making application navigation buttons more intuitive,
  rewording headers to provide clearer directions, and simplifying its
  "source of hire" tracking.


• Use of video - Because pictures are more powerful
  than words as selling tools, DaVita started the DaVita YouTube.com channel,
  with 30+ videos. It later expanded its own portals video offering to
  highlight its seven most popular positions.


• Use of social media - DaVita created branded social
  media networks and integrated pointers to them throughout the site.
  There are prominent links on every page to allow candidates to interact
  using their chosen platform(s). It uses crosslinks, contests, and job
  updates to drive candidates to their careers portal from these networks.


• Mobile Accessible - It came to the realization that
  all firms eventually will come to: accessing to the Internet via a
  mobile device is quickly becoming ubiquitous for professionals.
  Recognizing the incredible growth rate of smart phone usage among its
  target population, it retooled its site to be mobile friendly. Smart
  phone browsers are automatically directed to pages with easier
  navigation, quick access to company news, and options to subscribe to
  mobile updates.


• Fun features - It added some features to its site
  including printable coloring book pages to help teammates and patients
  explain dialysis to children, while at the same time hopefully planting
  seeds for future healthcare careers.


• Online assessment - Improvements in technology now
  make it increasingly possible to conduct some candidate assessments
  online. As a result, DaVita integrated its standard DDI assessments into
  its online application process.


• Used metrics and analytics - It used Google
  Analytics to extensively monitor visitor trends. However, it didn't just
  use metrics to report trends; instead, it used the analytics to adjust
  how DaVita organizes and presents information, so that it actually
  garners more attention.


• Ease of navigation - It added rotating branding
  messages to each page's navigation bar. This helped to strengthen the
  DaVita brand image by highlighting its employer-of-choice awards and
  other recognition. As part of this effort it created a corporate awards
  page.


• Realistic job previews - it "screens-in" higher
  quality candidates by presenting realistic job previews. It also
  upgraded its Community & Culture page to better show the DaVita
  VILLAGE (worksite).


• Investment and results - It did the work to
  modernize the career site internally, spending just $60,000 for upgrades
  and ongoing maintenance. Results included significant growth in hiring
  while reducing job board expenses by 85%. Part of this budget is now
  used for targeted search engine marketing.

Finalist - Intuit

This well-known financial software provider, under the leadership of
Michael McNeal, has been a long-time innovator in all aspects of
recruitment. This year Intuit trashed the traditional career site
architecture, opting instead to create a rich user experience that
demonstrates to prospective talent that Intuit does a lot more than make
tax software. While not accessible to mobile browsers (mobile visitors
are served up more traditional content), the site provide an
interesting experience worth checking out. Key features include:

• Interactive - The new site, launched in mid-2009,
  is built entirely in Flash. The highly interactive portal opens with
  Melanie, a real Intuit receptionist who welcomes and instructs visitors
  to explore three interactive "rooms" labeled Innovate, Connect, and
  Grow. In the innovate room visitors can discover several ways that
  Intuit employees let their creativity run wild, such as Idea Jams,
  Design for Delight methodology, and "follow me homes." The connect room
  lets visitors connect with social networks, and the grow room tells
  them about growth and learning opportunities at Intuit.


• Product integration - Intuit is currently
  developing an additional interactive channel called "Main Street" that
  will let visitors explore the multitude of products and services that
  can help Intuit customers manage their financial lives.


• Use of analytics - It implemented Google Analytics
  to enable robust tracking and better reporting capabilities.


• ROI - the cost to rebuild the site was steep,
  $250,000, but the results are promising. Over the last half of 2009 it
  averaged 26,000 unique visitors per month and over 10,000 applicants
  selected the website as its source of hire.

In recent years prospective top talent has got much better at
filtering out attempts to market to them, and much better at engaging in
efforts to communicate with them. As social networking continues to
evolve and more recruiting organizations master the art of servicing
talent in interactive and innovative ways the importance of the
employment branding will skyrocket. If you think your organization is
among the best, put your assumptions to the test and apply for
consideration next year!

In the next installment of this series, I'll take a look at college
recruiting, retention, and the use of technology.

In parts
one and two
of this series we covered the best practices of the winner and finalist
in the employee referral, employer branding, and corporate career site
categories of this year's ERE Recruiting Excellence Awards. It's hard
to capture using just a few bullet points the degree to which
organizations selected have thought through their efforts, but as you
are reading through the series, I hope you are comparing your
organization and contemplating how you stack up. The one thing that
separates nearly all winners from the rest of the pack is the relentless
application of learning to improve existing processes or devise new
ones.

This installment will cover the college recruiting, retention, and
strategic use of technology categories.

While many with the economy in mind might think that not much
happened in these areas this past year, the truth is that a good number
of award applicants worked hard to innovate in each of these categories.

Excellence in College Recruiting

This award goes to the recruiting department that has best
demonstrated its excellence in all aspects of college recruiting.
Worldwide there has been a reduction in the volume of college recruiting
taking place, but fortunately there has been no letup in innovation in
the tools and strategies used. As a turnaround begins, updated college
recruiting plans and strategies must already be operational.

Winner - Ernst & Young

As one of the "big four," Ernst & Young's thirst for new talent
to fill the ranks of its professional service workforce is unending.
Despite noticeable economic impacts on their business, Ernst & Young
invested as usual, hiring 2,700 new graduates from over 300 of the best
colleges and universities in North America. Over the years Ernst &
Young have pioneered new approaches, been early adopters of technology,
and demonstrated unwavering commitment to seeking out the best and
brightest. Some of its key college
recruiting accomplishments include:

• "Best Place to work" rankings - Ernst & Young
  has successfully developed one of the strongest college recruiting
  employer brands in any industry. For the second year in a row, business
  and accounting students ranked Ernst & Young as Universum's #1 IDEAL
  Employer of US undergraduates. Across all majors, E&Y is the
  highest-ranked accounting firm, coming in at #6 overall. Diverse
  students studying accounting rated them as the #1 Ideal Employer for the
  second year in a row on Universum's Undergraduate Survey.


• A CRM model - Ernst and Young manages its priority
  campuses in the same way that the firm manages its client relationships,
  with highly organized student-focused teams whose goal is to build
  strong relationships with students, faculty, and the administration.
  Each priority campus team is led by a Campus Coordinating Partner,
  supported by a range of additional client-serving professionals
  representing various service lines, geographic locations, and ranks
  within the firm. (Currently over 1,500 client-serving professionals and
  75 dedicated recruiters work on campus teams.)


• Executive involvement - each corporate board
  member, including the Chairman and CEO Jim Turley are expected to make
  regular campus visits.


• Contests - this year it launched its "Your World
  Your Vision" contest, which invited teams of students to propose how
  they could make a difference at a local level through community
  responsibility. Winning teams were awarded $10,000 to implement their
  concept.


• Simulation - it launched a new virtual reality
  simulation called "Flexspace" that allows students to explore how work
  and personal commitments can both coexist in the Ernst & Young
  culture.


• Facebook - it launched its Connect2U, a Facebook
  application that connects students to campus events and recruiters.
  (Each year E&Y has invested in improving its presence on Facebook
  and in innovating how the channel can be used to better attract and
  support potential applicants).


• Intern conference - once again, E&Y was the
  only ‘Big Four' organization to hold an International Intern Leadership
  Conference. It was attended by 1,700 students from over 20 countries.


• Intern Leadership Program - this pre-internship
  experience brought freshman and sophomores into E&Y offices during
  the summer to learn more about the benefits of a career in accounting.
  The success of these programs has led to over 90% conversion rate of
  interns to full-time hires for the past three years.


• Inclusiveness program - the Inclusiveness
  Recruiting team spent time with university officials at nine priority
  schools to brainstorm how E&Y can help schools increase diversity
  across their student population. In addition, in 2009 it created the
  Ernst & Young Faculty Inclusiveness Awards to help students
  recognize faculty members who advance inclusiveness on their campuses.

Finalist - Rosetta

This 700-employee privately held interactive marketing and
advertising firm is a global leader when it comes to designing award
winning, innovative solutions for their clients, so it should come as no
surprise that their dedication to excellence carries over into their
recruiting effort. Rosetta puts a heavy emphasis on college recruiting,
as 44% of all hires at Rosetta are sourced from college campuses. Their
college recruiting program is led by two dedicated recruiters and
supported by approximately 125 alumni team members. Some of its key
accomplishments in college recruiting include:

• Awards - its award-winning internship program was
  the winner of the NEOSA's Best Internship Program Award. The program
  gives interns the opportunity to spend approximately 70% of their time
  on client engagements and 30% on structured training, internal
  initiatives, social events, and community involvement.


• A comprehensive effort - its college recruiting
  team further contributes to the success of college hires by leading
  training, performance management, cultural engagement, and coaching on
  how to manage millennials.


• A dedicated campus team - each of their 19 targeted
  campuses has a dedicated team with a college recruiting team leader, an
  executive sponsor, and a team captain.


• Campus selection - the campuses to be targeted are
  selected based on a formula which includes academic rankings, alumni
  relationships, historic performance, majors offered, and enrollment
  statistics. Rosetta creates a unique campus strategy for each targeted
  school.


• Assessment - its college interview process
  evaluates candidate skill sets and competency alignment using the same
  process that the firm uses in performance management.


• Social media - Rosetta creates interactive
  information sessions and social media promotions via Twitter, Facebook,
  YouTube, and LinkedIn.

Excellence in Retention

Many organizations don't think about retention programs in a
formal way, but more often than not they do engage in practices that
drive retention. This award goes to the function that has best
demonstrated its excellence in programs and practices that support
employee retention as part of the recruiting function. Despite a
turbulent economy, organizations should develop ways to retain talent
they have invested heavily in or that provide industry-leading
performance in specialized areas. When the economic recovery picks up,
many organizations will find themselves fighting attrition issues and
will not be prepared.

Winner - PNC Bank

PNC Bank has been on an aggressive growth curve for more than 20
years, most recently acquiring National City. In response to changing
economic conditions, it repositioned its recruiters into an expanded
role to help with retention and internal mobility. Some of its key
accomplishments in employee retention include:

• An expanded strategy - PNC expanded the scope of
  its traditional recruiting program to focus on ongoing strategic talent
  management, i.e. proactive redeployment. As part of that new strategy,
  it launched an internal campaign to educate employees about the features
  and capabilities of the program. It later followed up with information
  on their successes and how future program enhancements would benefit
  everyone.


• Recruiters as internal placement specialists -
  because of a 20% downtrend in requisitions attributed to the economy and
  consolidation in the banking industry, its recruiting function
  developed a retention role for its recruiters. It redeployed recruiters
  as internal placement specialists charged with helping to redeploy
  surplus employees, ensuring that the firm didn't lose good talent. It
  managed to successfully redeploy 501 people whose roles were being
  eliminated due in part to consolidation. It also managed to successfully
  redeploy an additional 50 people into temporary assignments. It further
  expanded the program at year's end to include placement opportunities
  with vendors and strategic partners.


• Results - its retention effort saved the
  organization approximately $9 million in severance, recruiting, and
  outplacement costs.

Finalist - Paychex

Nearly everyone has heard of this New York-based payroll and HR
service provider with more than 100 offices throughout the U.S. To help
stave off attrition and retain client serving professionals, Paychex
reengineered its new-hire engagement processes to better support rising
performers. Some of its key accomplishments in employee retention
include:

• Recruiter involvement in onboarding - it
  launched its "Stay Connected" program, which is an extended six-month
  onboarding program. In this program, the recruiter serves as an
  extension of their immediate supervisor and is charged with influencing
  the development of new hires. The recruiter reaches out to the new hire
  through calls, emails, and engaging activities at targeted points in
  their tenure.


• Recruiter involvement in development - Paychex also
  created its "REACH Program" (Reinforcing Employees to Achieve Career
  Heights) to speed up the development of recent hires. The recruiter
  helps to encourage consistent communication between the employee and
  their management team by using the recruiting team to touch base at six,
  nine, 12, and 18 months. During the REACH calls, the developmental
  discussion topics that are provided in the REACH guide are reviewed and
  discussed.

The Most Strategic Use of Technology

Technology has become pervasive in recruiting, and progressive
organizations are finding a near endless range of possibilities when it
comes to applying technology
to enable innovative practices. Because it can be difficult comparing
the merits of one approach to another when they are focused on radically
different things, this year's judges ERE opted to highlight the
practices of three organizations this year, including a winner and two
finalists.

Winner - KeyBank

KeyBank, a major U.S. bank with a growing footprint, headquartered in
Cleveland, Ohio, now has over 1,000 full-service branches and 15,000+
employees. This past year it employed technology to improve quality of
hire and retention by developing a virtual job tryout for high volume
client facing roles. The virtual job tryout allows candidates to learn
about the organization, job role, and to experience the job through
interactive scenario simulations. A majority of those who have completed
the VJT indicated that based on that experience, they would gladly tell
their friends about opportunities with Key Bank. As a result of this
realistic job preview and assessment process, it realized a
multi-million dollar cost savings in teller turnover in year one, simply
by making better hiring decisions, reducing training costs, and
increasing quality of hire. The bank also statistically linked
performance on the VJT with critical outcomes including service
delivery, referral generation, transaction efficiency, and cash drawer
accuracy. (More info will be in the Journal.)

Finalist - AT&T

AT&T is a telecommunications giant headquartered in Dallas,
Texas, employing nearly 300,000 employees. With a staggering array of
vacancies in field roles to fill each year, this year AT&T turned
its attention to supporting potential applicants who don't sit behind a
desk all day and might not have access to the Internet at home.
AT&T developed an overall mobile platform recruiting strategy
empowered with a series of tools to facilitate mobile recruiting
efforts. This new strategy and structure allows it to create mobile web
pages and SMS (text messaging) campaigns to support recruitment events.
It also developed a first of its kind iPhone application that links job
seekers to career opportunities, events, multimedia, and mobile opt-in
programs for alerts related to job categories of choice. This iPhone
application has been downloaded 29,000+ times and has consistently
ranked in the Top 40 most popular free business applications on iTunes.

Finalist - Tata

You may never have heard of Tata, but chances are someday you will
have a direct connection to this Mumbai, India-headquarted global
conglomerate. The group has more than 357,000 employees worldwide and is
ranked 13th among the ‘25 Most Innovative Companies according to BusinessWeek.
The Reputation Institute also recently rated Tata 11th on its list of
world's most reputable companies. Some of the key elements related to
its use of technology include:

• Real-time workforce planning - it created a robust
  workforce deployment and recruitment planning capability by architecting
  a custom workforce planning tool. This software collates the overall
  requirements for experienced professionals across TCS globally. The
  tool displays the real-time status of requirements across geographies,
  customers, and proficiency levels.


• College portal - it created an Academic Interface
  Portal, which is a website that caters to the diverse needs of
  university students and professors. This portal facilitates real-world
  learning; it educates students about areas in which they need to
  develop; and it facilitates interaction between the company and faculty
  and students.


• Online on-boarding - it developed an online
  onboarding and integration tool called "My Integration" which provides a
  milestone-based guide. It offers both document libraries and discussion
  boards. The tool also provides the capability of surveying and
  reporting the satisfaction levels with all talent management systems.

Advancing an organization's capability during times of economic
turmoil is a characteristic of highly successful organizations. While
many believe that corporate treasure chests grow during times of
economic growth, the truth is that the seeds that make such dramatic
growth possible are planted when most are struggling to survive. All of
the organizations highlighted via the awards should be commended for
their efforts. If you have questions for those mentioned, post them
here and engage the ERE community to fuel your innovation efforts.

Up next, in the final installment of this series, I'll cover the
practices of the two organizations highlighted by the Function of the
Year Award.

If you have read parts
one through three, you already know that despite a down economy, a
good number of organizations documented the need for innovation and made
the business case for change in their organizations. The focus on
supporting applicants using mobile technology was common, as were
efforts to improve quality of hire, plan more effectively, and drive
retention.

Notably absent from this year's awards: a major focus on diversity. For the first
time since the awards program's inception, not enough applications were
received in the category to enable adequate comparison. Did diversity
drop in importance, or have diversity recruiting efforts become so
embedded that organizations no longer evaluate them on a standalone
basis?

In this final installment, I'll look at the practices of two
organizations that pulled their practices together to make the case as
to why they should be considered the Function of the Year.

Winning this award is the highest achievement that a recruiting
function can achieve outside public recognition by its own executive
team as being a core contributor to organizational success. Over the
years the winners of this award have demonstrated excellence in
developing a strong business case in dollars, building an impactful
employer brand,
leveraging metrics
extensively, innovating in critical areas, applying the CRM model to
applicant/candidate management, supporting robust workforce planning,
and using new technology to enable new practices.

Winner - Sodexo USA

If one were to look at the recruiting practices of the U.S. region of
this integrated global food and facilities management services provider
with over 110,000 employees, you wouldn't guess that its function was
only a few years old. Like many organizations, Sodexo experimented with
outsourcing the full scope of its recruiting activities in 2004, opting
to pull the function back in house in early 2005 following a disastrous
experience with Spherion. In four years, the recruiting function at
Sodexo has not only architected and implemented a recruiting function
from scratch; it has done so while coping with 300% organizational
growth. While many would have struggled just to keep pace and tackle
the enormous change management required to bring a function back in
house and consistently innovate, Sodexo has gone 10 steps further,
establishing themselves as a benchmark leader in many aspects of talent
management. Some of the key accomplishments that established Sodexo as
the Function of the Year include:

• Strategic leadership - its HR and recruiting
  leadership team have been on the leading edge of innovation in talent
  management for several years now. It has repeatedly convinced senior
  executives to support and fund an ever evolving array of initiatives by
  making a compelling business case routed in business impact.


• Employer branding - its recently implemented
  employer branding effort has dramatically increased the visibility of
  this previously "invisible" firm (with a hard-to-pronounce and spell
  name, it was recently changed from Sodexho to Sodexo to make it easier).
  Its leadership team has made a concerted effort to win awards and to be
  significantly more visible in the media. Its refurbished its referral
  program to help use employees to spread the word about this well-managed
  firm.


• High-volume capability - it has developed the
  capability to "scale up" its recruiting effort in order to meet its
  nearly 60% annual growth rate. The process allows it to recruit for
  5,000+ management and executive roles annually.


• An investment in training - it hired a full-time
  recruiting trainer to identify functional training needs, develop
  curricula, seek out industry/professional training opportunities, and to
  track progress. Its recruiters are required to obtain AIRS CIR/CDR
  certifications. It regularly shares best practices during weekly
  department calls. It also regularly engages top specialists including
  Shally Steckerl, Lou Adler, and myself to provide technical and
  strategic guidance.


• A remote work organization - it organized its
  recruiting function to support remote work. The Sodexo recruiting team
  is comprised of 80 professionals, each of whom work from home offices
  distributed across 38 states.


• CRM - it uses CRM technology to support candidate
  relationship management in addition to the traditional ATS technology to
  support administrative workflow.


• Social media excellence - Sodexo's social media
  initiative is on the leading edge of best practices. It has been widely
  recognized as a model for emulation by leading industry, HR, and
  recruiting professionals. Its web
  presence effectively communicates Sodexo's company, culture, and
  opportunities across a Careers blog, Facebook page, LinkedIn group, You
  Tube Channel, Twitter,
  and Flickr. It
  also provides multiple venues for talent to interact with recruiters,
  employees, and one another through social media sites and technically
  focused microsites. Its associated sites and social networks contribute
  an additional 127,000 page views and over 5 million media impressions
  annually. The Society for New Communications Research recently
  recognized Sodexo with the Excellence Award for its pioneering work with
  Microblogging.


• Web excellence - it has developed online talent
  communities to better target and support candidate populations. It has
  re-launched the Sodexo USA Careers website as the hub of a vast array of
  online properties that displays the many faces of Sodexo, including the
  company, employees, values, culture, and career opportunities.


• Employee referral - it revamped its employee
  referral program to focus on referee and referral service, resulting in a
  36.2% increase in referral activity, and a whopping increase of 50% in
  the percentage of total external hires attributed to the ERP.


• Analytics - it uses extensive metrics to measure
  and report on individual and team performance, including metrics that
  cover customer satisfaction and hiring cycle time.


• Diversity report card - it has a strong emphasis on
  diversity. It uses a diversity scorecard and it measures and reports
  the diversity of the candidate slate for each position.


• Alumni/boomerang effort - it has launched a major
  boomerang program known as the "Alumni Reconnexions Program" resulting
  in 123 rehires in 2009.


• Military recruiting - it developed a highly
  successful military focused recruitment initiative that increased
  military management hires by 28%.


• Results produced - it has consistently produced
  significant results, including a 211% increase in career site traffic, a
  56% increase in candidates per requisition, and a $300,000 reduction in
  advertising costs.

Finalist - CACI International Inc.

The average American may never have heard of CACI International (which
will speak at ERE's Fall conference in Hollywood, Florida), but it has
played a vital role in keeping America and our allies safe for nearly 50
years by supporting the Department of Defense and intelligence
communities' IT needs. Employing more than 12,700 employees, CACI
International is ranked by Fortune magazine as one of the most
admired companies in the information technology industry. Despite
focusing on recruits that require high-level security clearance and a
lack of visibility, CACI has developed workforce planning practices that
are superior to many well-known Fortune 100 companies. It strategy is
powerful because it focuses on improving organizational performance by
identifying new sources of human capital, implementing innovative
technological approaches, and by measuring operational performance.
Some of its key accomplishments include:

• Predictive Modeling - CACI leads the way in
  adapting proven "business solutions" and tools to recruiting problems.
  Only a handful of recruiting departments use this forward-looking
  planning tool. Effective predictive modeling allows both recruiting and
  hiring managers to proactively prepare for future staffing issues and
  opportunities that occur within the scope of its business development
  strategic plan.


• Monetizing recruiting - in addition to the
  traditional metrics like recruiter workload, workforce movement, and
  days-to-fill, it also calculates lost revenue. Demonstrating revenue
  gains and losses in dollars as a result of talent management decisions
  is a critical factor in getting managers to pay attention to talent
  management issues. It has calculated that its recruiting success enabled
  CACI to generate an additional $12.2 million in revenue in 2009.


• Advanced trending - rather than relying exclusively
  on historical metrics, it also uses "real-time hiring metrics" to
  identify trends in order to improve operational excellence. These
  real-time metrics are evaluated to facilitate more effective
  decision-making.


• Rewarding managers for great hiring - CACI is one
  of only a handful of firms that have had the foresight and courage to
  offer incentive bonuses to effective hiring managers. $500,000 in bonus
  compensation has been allocated to motivate managers to make hiring a
  top priority.


• Agility to scale up - it has developed a process
  for identifying potential recruiting problems including "aging
  requisitions" and "hard-to-fill" jobs. This process alerts recruiters
  and triggers the use of supplemental RPO vendors and third-party
  recruiters to augment recruiting capability.


• A revitalized referral program - it successfully
  used an aggressive employee referral marketing campaign that, combined
  with cash incentives, quarterly sweepstakes, and team-building bonuses
  successfully drove increases in referral submittals by 78% while
  decreasing referral costs per hire by 61%. Overall 31% of all hires came
  from referrals. The referral program also has an alumni component which
  allows alumni to make referrals. This program encourages CACI alumni to
  network within their current network because they receive a bonus when
  they successfully refer candidates back to CACI. Its alumni program
  increased their rehires by 20% last year.


• Facilitated internal movement - CACI has developed
  an employee mobility program to supplement its external recruiting
  effort. By proactively seeking out internal candidates and filling jobs
  internally, it increases retention rates while simultaneously reducing
  hiring costs (external hires are as much a 60% more costly than internal
  transfers). This automated tool makes it easier for managers to
  identify potential fills for project needs and aids employees by helping
  them to proactively manage their careers. Last year its proactive
  internal mobility program filled 701 positions from internal sources.


• Search engine optimization - by using an effective
  search engine optimizationprocess on Google, Yahoo, and Bing it has
  successfully increased the visibility of CACI jobs, attracting 15,600
  new applicants from these sources in this year alone.


• Social networks - it has implemented a successful
  social media strategy which includes visibility on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Altogether,
  this effort attracted an additional 519 new applicants in an eight-month
  period.


• Military hiring - in addition to its traditional
  military hiring program, it has a specialized effort for recruiting
  disabled veterans. CACI is listed among the Top 100 Most
  Military-Friendly Employers, and Civilianjobs.com listed it as one of
  The 2009 Most Valuable Employers for Military.


• Speed of hire - its effort to streamline the hiring
  process resulted in reducing days to fill from 31 to 26 days. Overall
  it successfully recruited and filled 3542 positions last year.


• Cost per hire - its hiring process also produced an
  average cost-per-hire of $3,401, which is extremely low in its industry
  where recruits often must have unique skill sets and security
  clearances.

Final Thoughts

The award recipients highlighted in each of the four parts of this
article have clearly "pushed the envelope" in recruiting and talent
management. Despite tough economic times, they have implemented new
approaches and technologies. There's a lot that can be learned from
these firms, but perhaps the most important lesson is that you need to
keep learning and benchmarking. If you're still focusing on transactions
and cutting costs, realize that you are way behind the curve and it is
highly unlikely that you will be adequately prepared to explode out of
the blocks when the economic upturn begins. My congratulations to all of
the winners, finalists, and applicants. Each of you demonstrated your
professionalism by both successfully implementing your innovations and
by sharing them with others. It was a pleasure both reading and sharing a
few of your best practices.