My CollegeRecruiter.com | Employers & Advertisers
by Barbara Ling
Brief, pithy and to the point.
How much money have you lost in the stock market?
Even more relevant to your career as a recruiter, how much money have your candidates lost?
And perhaps the most important of all, how many of your placed candidates are now thinking of jumping because of their company's financial future?
Watching the stock market over the past year or so go Slip-a-dee-doo-dah (all the way down down down along with my lifelong savings which include my AT&T and Lucent shares from my previous employment) evokes a myriad of emotions within me. One is, why didn't I invest in Microsoft back in 1986? Another is, well, gee, this is an opportunity to become philosophical! Yeah! That's the ticket!
But it goes far deeper. Remember over the past year or so, candidates were seduced all over the place with the notion of pre-IPO stock. Get in on the ground floor! Make your millions!
As you can now tell, the joyride is kinda sorta over. One only has to check out stories like "Perfect Storm playing on Wall Street" at http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20001021/bs/markets_stocks_dc_537.html or watch the earnings reports of many companies to see that all of a sudden, future retirement accounts which were taken for granted, now are being re-examined again.
How will this affect you as a recruiter? Well, try to get the pulse of your candiates regarding their employment concerns. For example, during the heyday of AT&T, the stock value was over $60. Three days ago I checked my retirement account again.
All of a sudden, I realized that were I to retire today, I'd survive, oh, say, considerably less than a couple of years? And as I plan on living far longer than that after 65 or so, I need to take action yesterday.
What will you do if your candidates start feeling the same way about their employment? Can you catch this feeling *before* they start looking to jump ship? Can you point them to money-management sites such as http://www.fool.com or online brokerages such as http://dljdirect.com How about frugal living such as http:www.frugalliving.about.com or a whole category at http://directory.google.com/Top/Home/Homemaking/Frugality/ ?.
Certainly, there are no simple answers for this. But the facts do remain - because candidates look out for number one, themselves, it's natural that they will consider their long-term financial prospects at their current organizations. If this picture isn't as rosy as it could be, make sure to have your financial-planning facts ready to assist them. It's something that will make you stand out in their mind.
-- Article courtesy of Barbara Ling. For more information, please go to RISE seminars at http://www.riseway.com/ or The Internet Recruiting Edge at http://www.barbaraling.com/recruiting.html..
