Learning How to Recruit and Retain Millennials

I don’t have a human resources or recruiting degree of any kind yet, as an owner of job board CollegeRecruiter.com, I need to understand the issues facing those who do. I attend a lot of human resource and recruiting conferences and try to take in as many of the sessions as possible and speak with as many practitioners and thought leaders as I can. Today I had the good fortune of listening to two of the foremost experts on the recruitment and retention of Gen Y / Millennial young adults: Terese Corey Blanck and Judy Anderson.

Terese and Judy are the principals behind Emerging Advantage, which helps organizations gain a competitive advantage by providing services which engage and accelerate the development of entry-level employees impacting retention, performance and promotability. In a 2.5 hour presentation to a packed room, Terese and Judy skillfully played off each other and the attendees in first making the case that Gen Y behavior frustrates many employers then proving that it has been misdiagnosed as a generational issue and then laying out specific recommendations for how employers both large and small can recruit and retain those 18-30 year old, emerging adults so they are ready to replace the Boomer Generation as the retirement of those older workers accelerates over the next decade.

The session was sponsored by the Emerging Leaders Association, which also deserves kudos for putting on such an interesting and informative event in an effort to help its members and guests like me guide our future leaders to a state of readiness for the uncertainties and challenges ahead. If your organization is struggling with recruiting and retaining Gen Y candidates, I urge you to contact these two fine organizations to learn more about how they can help.

HR’s Missing Link

Why Human Capital Supply Chains are critical for post-recession success.

During the recession of 2008/2009, websites like Forbes’ Layoff Tracker displayed a running list of companies that laid off hundreds, thousands and even tens of thousands of workers. Certainly, if CEOs had a more fluid method to relate slowing business performance to a decreased need for human capital in real-time they would have been able to gradually ramp down their staffing levels rather than decrease them so abruptly and publically.

As the economy rebounds, your company will be vying with competitors for the same top talent. Who will win? The company that has been most strategic during the downturn by investing in streamlined processes and best-in-class technologies will be best poised to react quickly and snap up the most qualified talent first. So now’s your chance.

It’s essential that your company calibrate and fine tune your workforce, so you can quickly respond to changing market conditions in small steps rather than in painful mass layoffs or mass rehire campaigns where workforce quality is likely to suffer.

We must all manage our human capital as efficiently and effectively as we manage all of the other parts of our business. It’s time to streamline, optimize and apply integrated technology solutions to human resources. Translating manufacturing and distribution supply chain lessons learned at Toyota, Walmart and Dell to the human capital supply chain is an obvious idea. An obvious idea few are implementing.

Establishing a Human Capital Supply Chain means you link business strategy, business performance, strategic workforce planning, staffing, onboarding and offboarding for improved corporate financial management and greater business success.

Firms that understand their human capital needs on a real-time basis should not be taken by surprise. Rather, they’ll be in tune with market dynamics and able to quickly react with agility, ramping down their workforce less aggressively or fighting back to pick-up core talent without delay.

For companies that want to grow in a post-recession economy, it’s time to refocus and apply the lessons learned from optimizing your product lines to optimizing your workforce. Here’s how you can start:

1. Understand your company’s total spend on human capital. This is a key input to the business ROI and the first step of any Human Capital Supply Chain management program. This requires you and your CFO to get your arms around both your internal (wages, benefits and taxes) and external (accounts payable) human capital spending.
2. Break down barriers between HR, procurement and senior leadership. Establishing a Human Capital Supply Chain management program requires a major change management effort for all stakeholders. You’ll need to speak a shared language, utilize each other’s strengths and unify your human capital goals.
3. Build on existing (even somewhat disjointed) business functions. To employ an end-to-end Human Capital Supply Chain management business process, you’ll want to start with <<this example Ch 6>> and tailor it to your own organization.
4. Automate. Automate. Automate. The use of technology in automating the end-to-end business process is a common way to reduce costs and speed turnaround time. It’s also vital for real-time measurement and management of human capital.
5. Embrace the value in staffing suppliers. The bias toward permanent staff needs to change in order to be more nimble in today’s marketplace. Transform your relationships with staffing firms into strategic partnerships in order to best enable Human Capital Supply Chain goals.

The recession we’re pulling out of could be the turning point for the global industry and our HR executives. The call to streamline. The catalyst for innovation. The moment that will change our industries forever.

It is vital that all of us – CEOs, HR executives, procurement and staffing industry executives – answer this call to action. It will ensure that we’re ready for the post-recession ramp-up in hiring and the skill shortages that will return as the Baby Boomer generation actually begins to retire.

There is no doubt that if you want your company to lead in the post-recession talent grab, you must start building your Human Capital Supply Chain now. It’s your decision. Are you ready to get going or are you going to wait to be overtaken by competitors that act first?

By Tim Giehll

Tim Giehll is co-author of Human Capital Supply Chains: Just in Time Talent to Boost Profits. With over 30 years of technology, staffing and manufacturing expertise, Giehll serves as CEO of Bond Talent US and Bond eEmpACT.

Offer Rate to Interns Varies Widely by Industry

When it comes to recruiting and retaining their interns, not all industries are created equally.

A good internship program is all about the three R’s: recruitment, recruitment, and recruitment. In other words, if your organization hires a student to intern and then fails to convert that student into a permanent employee upon the completion of their internship, then you should regard that internship as a failure. Some organizations would disagree and say that internships are provided to students to give them experience and some less altruistic organizations would say that internships are great sources of cheap labor. I can agree that students get — or should at least should get — great experience from their internships but organizations should not look upon interns as cheap labor. Given that they typically require far more supervision than experienced employees, the reality is that interns are rarely cheap. If the organization looks at the cost of producing the service or product rather than the hourly wage paid to individual employees, they’ll almost always agree that they don’t save money by hiring interns.

It is commonly known in the world of college recruiting that some organizations manage to retain a far higher percentage of their interns than others and that interns in some industries are far more likely to be retained than interns in other industries, but leave it to the Wall Street Journal to do the analysis that others haven’t. Yet another reason why I’m a subscriber and you should be as well.

This graph shows the huge discrepancies between industries. It is startling, actually. It clearly shows that an internship with a utility, architecture or construction firm is FAR more likely to lead to an offer of permanent employment than an internship with an insurance, media, or non-profit organization. So kudos to our friends in the utility, architecture, and construction industries. As for the insurance, media, and non-profits, well, you’ve clearly got a growth opportunity.

Encouraging Economic Signs in Retail Sector

Is the good news beginning to outweigh the bad? It was reported today that initial jobless claims unexpectedly increased by 12,000 last week to 465,000. However, the weekly claims is notoriously volatile measurement that fluctuates wildly even in the best of times.

The good news is that the four-week moving average, which is considered by most to be a more reliable indicator, fell to the lowest level since July 31. Meanwhile, the number of people who continued to receive jobless benefits fell by 48,000. In other good news, the index of leading economic indicators rose by a better-than-expected 0.3 percent in August and existing home sales increased by 7.6 percent last month. While, home sales and other economic measurements still remain severely depressed from pre-recession levels, they are heading in the right direction.

Retailers Already Announcing Mass Hiring

This morning, Macy’s Inc. announced it would hire 65,000 temporary seasonal workers, expecting sales to grow between 3 and 3.5 percent over last year. The announcement comes on the heels of a similar one from Toys R Us, which announced it will hire 10,000 seasonal workers this year. Outplace firm, Challenger Gray & Christmas, predicts hiring will increase this holiday season over last year, due to two consecutive months of sales gains in addition to a 65 percent decline in retail-sector job cut announcements since 2009.

Despite the good news, questions remain. What other businesses could see an uptick in hiring as the holidays approach? Do sales gains necessarily predict hiring? Will the workers hired for the holidays be able to retain their positions into the new year?

Source: Challenger Gray & Christmas

Five Questions Employers Should Ask in Phone Interviews

Most employers hire candidates only after the candidate has gone through at least one and typically a series of face-to-face interviews. But before the candidate ever meets someone face-to-face, they’ll typically speak with a recruiter over the phone. And before that recruiter schedules any time sucking face-to-face interviews, they should take a few minutes to screen the candidate by asking these five questions: Why are you leaving your current position? Why do you want to work for our company? What are your career goals? How can you help us? How can we help you?

Of course, the answers that your organization wants to hear may correctly differ from the answers that another organization wants to hear, and you may even correctly want to hear different answers from different candidates depending upon the position to which they’re applying, the candidate, and other factors.

Source: Lurie Besikof Lapidus & Company, LLP

The Sexy Side of HR

Jessica Miller-Merrill of Blogging 4 Jobs recently contacted me to ask if I would be interested in partnering with her and a few other human resource industry professionals to deliver a panel presentation at the SXSW Interactive conference in March 2011 in Austin, Texas. Her vision was to put together a group of us who could talk about how and why employers should use cell phone text messaging, social media, and other technologies to recruit and retain top talent. I gave her the enthusiastic thumbs up.

Jessica submitted the proposal in July and last week was notified by SXSW that her proposal made it to the second round of consideration. This next round consists of voting from visitors to the SXSW Panel Picker Page and those votes count for 30 percent of the score given to each proposal. In short, if you think that this is a good topic, it is really, really important that you vote for our panel.

Jessica (@blogging4jobs) will moderate The Sexy Side of HR panel and we’ll be joined by Joel Cheesman, Blogger & VP at Jobing.com (@cheezhead) and Carrie Corbin of AT&T Talent Attraction (@thealphafemme).

Please take out two minutes and do the following: Go to the Panel Picker Page, click the link to “Sign In” near the top corner, click “create a new account” (assuming you don’t have one already), complete the simple form, and vote for The Sexy Side of HR panel. It really is that simple. Thanks!!

IRS Uses YouTube for Recruitment. Why Aren’t You?

One of my favorite clients is the Internal Revenue Service, in part because statements like that tend to raise eyebrows amongst my friends and family. “The Internal Revenue Service? Aren’t they the bad guys?” Well, no one enjoys paying taxes but I think that most of us agree that we’re okay paying taxes when they’re well used. And the more you get to know the IRS and the people who work there, the more you’re amazed at how entrepreneurial they actually are.

Case in point: the IRS makes great use of recruitment videos to help communicate to potential employees the wide variety of jobs for which they recruit and the types of people best suited for those jobs. The typical person wouldn’t think of the IRS as a leader in the use of social media but they are. If you want to see an example, play this video of an actual IRS employee explaining what his job is and you’ll see what I mean. These videos are relatively inexpensive to make as the production qualities are good but not over the top and “real” people are used rather than more expensive hired guns.

Glassdoor.com Partners With CollegeRecruiter.com to Better Help Students in Search for Jobs

Robert Hohman

Students Get Inside Look at Salary Insights and Company Reviews Direct From Employees

SAUSALITO, Calif. (July 28, 2010) — Glassdoor.com (www.glassdoor.com), a career community offering  a free inside look at jobs and companies, has joined together with the just re-launched CollegeRecruiter.com to better help college students and recent graduates find the information they need to make better career decisions.

Now through CollegeRecruiter.com, students and grads can get firsthand insights from Glassdoor users into specific salaries by job title alongside job descriptions and open job listings in areas near them. In addition, visitors to CollegeRecruiter.com will get a behind-the-scenes look at what it is like to work or interview at a company and interview reviews based on feedback from employees or job candidates.

For example, with Glassdoor’s community insights and CollegeRecruiter.com’s jobs information, a recent grad who is looking to become a software engineer can find current job listings, get details into a specific company’s compensation package, find out how pay varies by location, see what other software engineers and other employees think about their jobs and employers, and get an advance peek into what it is like to interview at a certain company.

“Younger workers have been among the worst hit during the recession and so it’s especially important to arm the next generation of employees with the tools and resources they need to get off to a successful start,” said Robert Hohman, co-founder and CEO of Glassdoor. “Working together with CollegeRecruiter.com, we believe that our combined insights and data will help tomorrow’s workforce get a better understanding of the new normal in salary and learn about jobs and companies that align with their interests and is best suited to their education and skills.”

“We’re thrilled to be working with Glassdoor as we help lead the job board community from a Web 1.0 model where virtually all of the job posting, article, and other content is provided by the employers and the job board to a very Web 2.0 model where we continue to feature content from employers and our staff but also content provided by users of CollegeRecruiter.com, Glassdoor, and other sites,” said Steven Rothberg, President and Founder of CollegeRecruiter.com. “Our users – and users of all job boards – want and deserve a much more interactive, open, honest, and transparent experience. They want to learn about job opportunities and what it is like to work for a particular employer from that employer but also from current and past employees of that employer. Job seekers want and deserve the opportunity to engage in a conversation about the pros and cons about specific jobs, organizations, occupational fields, locations, and more. And with the re-launch of our site and partnership with Glassdoor, our job seeking visitors will get all of that. We’re thrilled.”

Content syndication from Glassdoor enables sites like CollegeRecruiter.com to provide to their users access to information on more than 85,000 companies currently in Glassdoor’s database. Company reviews and salary information on Glassdoor are provided anonymously by a community of insiders, providing great insight into the inner workings, compensation, and pros and cons of working at companies across the globe.

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About Glassdoor.com

Glassdoor.com is a career and workplace community giving a free inside look at jobs and companies. Glassdoor enables employees, job seekers, employers and recruiters to simultaneously see – for the first time – unedited opinions about a company’s work environment along with details on salary, company reviews, as well as benefits and CEO approval ratings. Glassdoor, founded in 2007 with a public beta version launched in June 2008, has since offered job interview questions and reviews, office photos as well as career advice.  Headquartered in Sausalito, Calif., Glassdoor was founded by Richard Barton, Robert Hohman and Tim Besse and has raised $9.5 million from its founders, Benchmark Capital and Sutter Hill Ventures.

To receive regular updates about new and interesting data and reports, visit the Glassdoor Blog or follow the company on twitter @glassdoordotcom. And, for more information about Glassdoor syndication opportunities and how they can help you, email bizdev@glassdoor.com.

About CollegeRecruiter.com

CollegeRecruiter.com is the leading job board for college students hunting for internships and recent graduates looking for entry level jobs and other career opportunities. CollegeRecruiter.com features hundreds of thousands of job openings and tens of thousands of pages of employment-related blogs, articles, podcasts, and videos. For more information, please visit http://www.CollegeRecruiter.com.

Headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, CollegeRecruiter.com was founded in 1991 by Steven Rothberg, who remains its President. To receive regular updates about new and interesting data and reports, visit the CollegeRecruiter.com Blog or follow CollegeRecruiter.com on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter. For more information about partnering with CollegeRecruiter.com, email Steven@CollegeRecruiter.com.

CollegeRecruiter.com Re-launches With Tight Integration With Twitter, Facebook

Minneapolis, Minnesota — July 27, 2010 — CollegeRecruiter.com, the leading job board for college students hunting for internships and recent graduates looking for entry-level jobs and other career opportunities, announced today that it has completed its fifth major update since launching in 1996. The newest version of the site takes advantage of integration opportunities which were not available even a couple of years ago such as sharing login information with social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook and user generated content with a variety of other sites.

Key features of the new CollegeRecruiter.com are:

• The new Web 2.0 site emphasizes user generated content and facilitates interaction between job seekers, employers, career counselors, and others. At the same time, CollegeRecruiter.com has preserved the ability of job seekers to search and apply to job posting ads.
• Candidates will now search for jobs, click on posting summaries, and immediately be taken to the web sites of the employers to both read the posting and apply to it.
• Candidates can post profiles on CollegeRecruiter.com and employers and others may review those and contact the candidates directly — at no charge.
• CollegeRecruiter.com anticipates that it will continue to see hundreds of thousands of unique visitors per month from its primary target markets of job seekers and employers but will now also see significant use and great content from college career service office professionals, career counselors, resume writers, admissions counselors and more.
• CollegeRecruiter.com employees have already built hundreds of Employer Spotlight pages for the top employers of college students and recent grads. The current job openings of those employers will automatically appear on those Spotlight pages … even if the employer has not paid CollegeRecruiter.com to do so. 
• Video, video, video! Employers and other users may post videos at no charge, helping them better connect with job seekers. 
• Finally, CollegeRecruiter.com has also updated its corporate structure so that its parent company is now known as CollegeRecruiter.com Holdings, Inc. and that organization owns two subsidiaries: CR Direct, Inc., which delivers the targeted emails and cell phone text messaging campaigns, and CollegeRecruiter.com, LLC, which delivers everything else including job postings and banners.

About CollegeRecruiter.com

CollegeRecruiter.com is the leading job board for college students hunting for internships and recent graduates looking for entry level jobs and other career opportunities. CollegeRecruiter.com features hundreds of thousands of job openings and tens of thousands of pages of employment-related blogs, articles, podcasts, and videos. For more information, please visit http://www.CollegeRecruiter.com.