A yank considers U.S. Year of the rat recruiting

The gloom and doom of 2008 hit the air waves at the end of 2007. No doubt on your side of the pond, there were not just rumors but outright verification of the fact that economic pressures in the United States were having profound effects on many aspects of business.

Word put out by the White House was that a tight labor market is looming and will be accompanied by a recession that will become quite deep. That is to say, employers have been using major layoffs to bring budgets back into control. There are few, if any, qualified candidates for the few existing positions.

The mortgage and lending industries caused several banks to be absorbed by larger entities. Then unethical and fraudulent lending practices of several years ago finally caught up with cost of living and were exposed to the light of day. Homeowners faced the unsavory specter of foreclosure and worse. The lenders faced homeownership. And either way you slice it, employees were being let go.

If we listen to word from the White House, we can expect to see nearly everyone in the U.S. (except the wealthiest, of course) become unemployed and homeless. The few who are qualified talent will be fought over by all major industry competitors and be offered quite lucrative salaries and sign-on bonuses. All the rest will take whatever crumbs they can get. The White House ordered all manner of economic adjustments of the various tools in order to stave off an impending long-term r[d]ec[pr]ession. Is this an accurate picture of the Year of the Rat (2008) in the U.S. Employment Industry? Nope.

First of all, the Asian Year of the Rat (unscientific, but bear with me; I tend to be offbeat and see things differently) is characteristically a year in which things are not done in the traditional way. This is a year of challenge and requires tenacity, ingenuity, and collaboration in order to attain ultimate success.

But what does any of that have to do with the Employment Industry and more specifically with recruiting? The layoffs and job cuts are real. The drop in quality workers is real (for a number of reasons). The lack of buying power to fuel business reinvestment is very legitimate. However, these impacts do not affect the entire industry nor the country.

In keeping with The Year of the Rat, recruiting and employment will encounter many challenges this year. They will be most acute in the areas of ethics, recruiting qualified talent, wages, and retention. Thatís on the domestic front. Similar challenges face American companies that are doing business and have offices in other parts of the globe. But the offshore challenges confronting American businesses are much different from on the homeland. My focus is only on the domestic. Perhaps these words will offer you some assistance in better understanding your dealings with your American counterparts and the pool of candidates from which theyíre pulling these people.

Ethics
Business relationships of any type should be founded upon the one most important concept yet the most elusive in recruiting ñ trust. If you canít rely on what the other person says nor trust that they will live up to the terms of your agreement, if you cannot expect fair and honest dealings with them, it makes no sense to be associated. But in the United States, the driving motivator is the ever-dropping value of the dollar and how much it can buy (of not).

As we move through 2008, there will continue to be an emphasis on developing universal standards of ethical recruiting. Through continued conversations about the what if and the why of things, we will sort through a view of how to handle things in an ethical manner. Ethics is not a popular topic of today, born in the aftermath of Enron and Adelphia. Ethics is here and here to stay in our consciousness. The better we can carry on the conversation, see how our actions have long-term effects in many ways, and understand how to make better decisions, the better we will become at being known for our reliability and trustworthiness. Like the Rat, this is a year in which we will learn to see things from a different perspective and come away much better for the lessons learned.

Recruiting
Although the constant slide of new hiring makes it look like we're heading for lean times, we need to realize that the economics of our college days still follow the same principles. There is still the Invisible Hand that normalizes trends and fluctuations. What we're now experiencing is a post-2000 recovery and right-sizing of businesses. Things such as quality of life and family began to raise their heads and work/life balance initiatives forced us to reconsider 60- and 70-hour work weeks -- that and increased ailments due to unrelieved stress.

So hiring initiatives increased and the pressures on existing staff were somewhat eased. Right now, we're attempting to right-size ourselves in relation to amount of staff actually needed to respond to demand for product/service with full quality, delivered on time, and still produce a profit. That right sizing will take a while for reaching normalcy.

In other words, recruiting in the old sense of the word will be tough. It will require looking at things from a new perspective and going after results in a new way, while maintaining good ethics.

Social Networking
Last April, we had a phenomenon overtake us. First called Web 2.0, then Web 3.0, we essentially boiled it down to social networking. This dynamic means many things to many people. Many are using these web tools in many ways. So there's no single definition of any of it except that it is an enhanced mode of using Web tools to communicate in all ways with others.

For some, this means using the tools in order to enhance business processes and collaborations. Here, the picture begins to melt into recruiting and hiring because we're using these tools for collaboration to share documents such as blogs, resumes, and the various ìroad shows.î We're still not certain about how to maximize the potential of these tools. In fact, weíre still not certain of the potential of these tools!

These tools and venues will grow along with our increased sophistication on sensible ways to use them with professionalism yet extract just enough of the person out to let us make good choices from long distance. The only thing I can say about social networking is that it is definitely here to stay. We simply need to give a lot of thought to how we express ourselves in order to make these tools as effective as they can be for finding the right qualified talent.

Right now we in the U.S. only see these as extensions of LinkedIn. But these networks are more than anything weíve experienced before and weíre only just scratching the surface of their potential. The use of the video resume compared with video interviewing is just one example.

These new online social venues are forcing our employment laws to look at things in a new way ñ from the electronics perspective and are forcing the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to reconsider some long-standing rules. Some changes have already been implemented. Look forward to more in the very near future.

Wages
What's in the air is what will happen with wages this year. With so many pressures to contain costs, there will be an equal amount of pressure to contain wage increases. Indeed, we're seeing evidence of pressures in the IT and CIO positions to make handsome overtures in order to induce new people to come on board. But seasoned veterans are not seeing comparable rewards for staying with the company, generating new ideas and cost-saving measures, nor any of the other rewards for their vision, loyalty, and tenacity. Suffice it to say, finding quality passive candidates in these ranks will be quite easy. The trick will be to develop an offer package with sufficient zing to make it worthwhile in the long run to make the change.

Although I've not studied other industries to determine whether they're making similar, guarded moves, it's a reasonable guess that the field is looking very homogeneous. Indeed, looking at the Jobster model from last year to this, and changes that its former CEO said he would make in starting up a new company, it seems starting packages will be modest so that companies can use their available resources to get a solid footing in their domain and then grow (in every sense of the word) as prudently as possible.

Comp time, benefits, and other incentives are still around and can provide reasons to stay with a company that is short on coming up with real dollar incentives.

Retention
What does all of this mean in relation to the pressures on recruiting talent, hiring the best qualified, and offering incentives to retain those who hold the promise of helping the company grow in the right direction? It means it will be even more difficult to find these people unless you're looking at new graduates to fill your needs. It's just that screening these people in order to be certain that they have the right skills will be quite a challenge.

Nestled in the ranks of the company are those who have been there for quite some time. Those who have been on the team for a time are starting to measure their value to the company compared with what's being offered by other companies. They're also evaluating whether the grass truly is greener next door or just mowed a different way so that it merely looks greener.

Still, if their track record is still being overlooked and there are deaf ears when it comes to acknowledging the positive effects they've had on ROI, profits, cost containment, and so on, they will be very open to talking with the recruiter and the sourcer who happens to call looking for a referral to someone who just happens to fit a particular description. The pot should be very sweet when it's held out for viewing. A strong footing today compared to a questionable tomorrow and an economy that the government is saying is about to plunge is not something that will make a person willing to walk at the drop of a hat.

How do you keep these loyalists? Reward for the work that is produced. Reward for results. Do regular reviews. Develop strong relationships with your people that are built on solid trust. Build a collaborative team based on trust.

Collaboration
In reviewing the prognostications of 2003, there are few things that can be said differently. In fact, the same needs exist today as did five years ago. We have not learned the lessons on clear communication. We have not learned the mandatory lessons about building relationships based on fair business dealings and trust. So one of the main tools for success in The Year of the Rat will automatically be thrown out ñ collaboration and partnerships.

Competitiveness in the U.S. recruiting world is still the overriding dynamic. To the extent that it is perpetuated with new people learning deceptive and undercutting practices from veterans and those who appear to be successful, the more the industry as a whole will suffer. Cooperation among allies will continue to be a matter of honesty among thieves and the industry as a whole will continue to suffer from a tainted and stained reputation.

Overall
While it is nice and interesting that many sites are springing up to allow all manner of folk to evaluate recruiters, it is indeed unfortunate that the evaluations seem to be based more on popularity than on accurate assessment of a recruiter's true abilities and trustworthiness. There are some who seek endorsements from others, yet there has been no previous communication between the parties except for an email asking for inclusion in one's friends list. There is no basis for any type of professional relationship or association. It will take longer than 2008 for people to fully appreciate the folly of these types of relationships. As the lack of substance becomes more obvious, so the livelihood of the sites will be determined.

We have a long way to go in developing good communication skills and learning to cooperate in order to build business. There are many recruiting industry practices that need to be unlearned. Those dynamics will not be part of the lesson plan for 2008. There are smart, prudent business people in the recruiting industry. They will pick and choose with discretion and will survive because of their choices, and will thrive with one another in the long run.