In our industry, there is no bigger elephant in the room than the Job Description. Yes, they are poorly written, but that’s just the start. Even the most well written job description will not solve the problem.
To understand why, you must take a step back and look at the big picture.
What is a Job Description? In short, it is an advertisement. In fact, it is the primary instrument used by organizations to advertise their job opportunities. Yet, for no reason other than tradition, job descriptions are not treated like other advertisements.
Creating a Job Description Advertisement
To create a Job Advertisement, you need to treat your unique job opportunity like a product. As with product advertising, steps include:
Every job opportunity has a compelling story. No matter the title, it is the right job for someone. You need to identify your target audience and understand what benefits that audience will find compelling. Why will this job make someone happy?
Having identified your target audience and compelling story, you are now ready to send your message to the masses.
Advertising Success = Reach x Frequency x Impact
It is always nice to simplify a complex operation into a little formula. Of course, it’s easier said than done. To understand the formula, we will start with definitions:
Measuring Reach and Impact
If you have a LinkedIn Recruiter account, you should take advantage of the “Job Analytics” tool to help measure the reach and impact of your job postings. It will give you statistics across all of your job postings and on an individual job basis.
To access the tool, select menu item “Reports” and then “Job Analytics”. To measure “Reach”, select one of your jobs. On the right side of the screen, you will see the Activity Summary section.
In this example, we first posted the job on March 9th and it has been viewed by 658 people. That is our “Reach” number. It is interesting to note the gradual decline in views since it was first posted. We can look at how many people responded to the “call-to-action” (apply here…) by clicking on the “Applies” tab. With 80 people having applied to the job, we can calculate that our “Impact” is 12%.
The Job Analytics tool has many other features. If you don’t currently use it, spending time to learn will return great dividends.
More on the Subject
To learn more about the subject of Job Descriptions Advertising and Business to Talent (“B2T”) Marketing, see our white paper, “Tips from the Mad Men”. You can access our white papers here:
http://www.allegisgroupservices.com/thought-leadership/white-papers.aspx
Parting Question
We will reveal the final piece of the puzzle in a future blog posting. Until then, we ask this question and invite your comments.
What is the difference between a real advertisement and a traditional job advertisement?
In this webinar, Ronald Kreugel, explains how companies can benefit from a total talent management approach. Some key benefits this webinar touches upon are: people-driven growth, dramatic soft cost reductions, rare talent, accelerated performance.
Click here now to listen to the on-demand recording.
A few of the key discussion points you will have the opportunity to review are:
• Understand why total talent management will add value to your company• What HR's role is in leading overall Talent Management• Dynamic workforce management to overcome unique operating challenges• Analyse the latest market trends and developments in workforce planning• Up skill recruitment team(s) for greater results in recognising talent• Linking workforce planning to business strategy• Analysis tool: Harness workforce characteristics and capabilities
Ronald Kreugel is the Director of Business Development for Allegis Group Services (AGS), and has over 17 years of international staffing and recruitment industry experience.
Don't miss our special section for addition resources under the transcription.
Thank you for the introduction and information, John and on behalf of Allegis Group Services I would like to welcome everyone to this webinar. My name is Ronald Kreugel and I am the Director of Business Development for Allegis Group Services based in Europe. Over the last 17 years I have worked for large staffing and recruitment services organisation and have been responsible for advising customer how to manage their contingent workforce efficiently and helping them achieve their contingent workforce objectives.
With me today I have Maria Boyse, our executive director human capital solutions based in California. Good morning Maria and could you please introduce yourself to our audience today?Thank you Maria. As not all of you have heard of Allegis Group let me shortly introduce our company to you. Founded in 1983 Allegis has become the world’s 4th largest provider of staffing and HR services and over the last decade we have become the global leading provider of Human Capital Solutions including over 55 neutral Managed Services Programmes with large blue chip companies and were ranked highest in quality of services according to Baker’s Dozen MSP list 2011 by HRO Today. Besides MSP we provide a wide range of solutions including Recruitment Process Outsourcing, HR Consulting and Executive Search. For today’s webinar which will last almost 1 hour we have compiled an agenda as follows:First we will share our vision on the global business trends and what the implications are on people management and HR. Then we will go into more detail on Total Talent Management and workforce trends. Since we at AGS strongly believe that contingent labor should be part of the total management strategy we will share our thoughts on how organisations including HR should look at contingent workforce now and in the future.Once we have gone through all slides we will conclude and also provide you useful tips about total management and why we think total talent management is key for HR leadership. So I hope you are all ready and please feel free to submit any questions via the chat.I think we all know that there is a lot happening in today’s world and that we are going through a global transformation. For years now it appears that the world is getting smaller and globalization is an ongoing trend, which I believe is unstoppable. New economies are emerging and the so called BRIC countries are considered to have a significant impact on the global economy, which by the way is still uncertain when looking at the crisis in Europe which is affecting the global economy as a whole.Studies show that there will be large demographic changes coming over the next years and aging workforce especially in Europe will have its effect on organisations. The global population is still rapidly growing but mostly in other parts of the world than Europe, simply have a look at India and China. It is unbelievable how many graduates we can expect to have coming from those countries, which will force organisations to think about workforce diversity and cultural change.Last but not least the impact of technology is tremendous. The speed of publishing, sharing and finding information is truly amazing these days and you wonder how we were able to manage this flow of information b.G. (before Google). Mobile internet and mobile devices will become increasingly important and will let people have access whenever and wherever they want it. More people are bringing devices to the workplace and social media is another unstoppable trend which will have its affect on organisations – think about how Facebook, LinkedIn and other platforms are already impacting the daily work of recruiters and HR. So when looking at the megatrends of globalisation, demographics and technology each one of these trends has an impact on organisations and business. The financial crisis started in 2008 is still not resolved and looks like economists predict further challenges and issues for the next few years. Organisations need to actively manage cost and often this results in lay offs and headcount reduction. I have read an article which concerned me regarding the ongoing reorganisations in the life sciences/pharma industry. A lot of that has to do with stricter government rules on medicines, all of them are looking for the next ‘blockbuster’ medicine but in the meanwhile many pharmaceutical companies are laying off people all over the world.The demographic changes will bring new generations and I think more than enough is said about generation X, generation Einstein, etc, etc. Probably it just me getting older and seeing my kids develop fast, which make think about the differences between generations but I believe this is from all times. However I do believe that future generations will feel more social responsibility and will care more about their work-life balance. Also immigrations will play a role as this will lead to more diversity and workforce challenges in terms of culture, policies, languages, etc.Technology is rapidly changing and predictions are that in 2015 there will be computers that will have the capabilities of a human brain, perhaps governments already have these but simply are not telling us. At least we already know the power of internet, mobile devices and social media which will require each organisation to rethink how to attract talent and access global talent pools. Furthermore company policies on usage of this media will be very important in this modern age. So these trends are putting business under pressure, obviously the usual pressure on cost management, higher productivity by doing more with less and making sure that organisations will have the talent they need which is aligned with the business strategy and objective.On top of the usual pressure we also see what we call ‘crisis pressure’ which has a negative effect on employee engagement. Doing more with less and increasing productivity will affect the workforce and having lay-offs mentioned in the newspaper or on TV news affects the employer branding of enterprises. Do you really want to work for a company that hires/fires people that easily? And what if that enterprise wants to attract different skills? Pressure to reduce human cost will certainly impact the total talent management strategies of many enterprises, but on the other hand can also be helpful to rethink this strategy. Going through these changes a lot of organisations seem to be challenged and wonder what they need to do to respond to the changes. Perhaps I am over simplifying things here, but actually I would like to challenge you a little bit here. What is your organisation doing? Is a traditional thinking company where focus lies on maximizing cost savings, stopping all new and innovative projects in order to reduce headcounts and cost? Do your organisation requires your staff to increase sales whilst reducing budgets? Obviously challenging times require organisations to rethink and it is more important than ever that leaders will make the right choices. Or is your organisation a more forward transformation thinking company? The opposite of traditional thinking where innovations and new operating models are embraced ultimately leading to changing conditions, making organisations and people more creative which can then lead to new organisation models and even more innovative behavior. Hang on, because this will certainly impact the talent your organisation is hiring, which can bring new skills and thinking.Personally I am a strong believer of the statement: “Change is the only constant” and we all know that changes will impact people. Each individual will react differently to change, some will hate it and some cannot live without constant change. From my personal point of view those enterprises that will put people first will most likely have a better chance to grow their future business as people will drive innovations, engagement of employees will be higher and overall performance will increase.
In the past the role of HR was very much focused on administration, ensuring that the payroll was executed correctly, ensuring benefits and pension/retirement administration, consultative role for business regarding labour legislation and HR only played a small role with regards to policy and planning. Often HR was informed last about business strategy and objectives, which led to a more reactive than pro-active role. Obviously depending on the industry or organisation you work for it may still be like this, but I do believe that many organisations have made significant changes to the HR strategy and departments. In most organisations CEO’s and senior management teams have learned over the past years that people and talent management are becoming increasingly important and that HR plays a pivotal role. A lot of enterprises have transformed their HR departments into HR business partners in order to have direct contact with line managers. Working closely with line managers, truly understanding the needs they have and translating this into policies and planning as well as immediate actions will help business to accelerate. A separation between administration and people management is often made and the pressure on HR to reduce people cost has led to more standardization, less spending and even outsourcing activities and self-services for managers and employees.
“Talent Management” is more than a hype, but still you can find this term across 90% of HR whiteboards or plans today. However does it mean the same for everyone? Is labeling your applicant tracking system as “talent management” the solution? Or is it a combination of initiatives that can be called “talent management”? Depending on your organisation’s definition, talent management is about having the right skills and workforce to maximize the performance of your organisation in order to achieve the strategic objectives. We believe that is about attracting, hiring, developing, training and retaining staff that will help your organisation achieving the goals defined by your organisation.Every organisation will say that people will make a difference, there is not a single CEO who will argue that. However if it so important to your organisation’s success then it needs to be more than a catchy term in your next PowerPoint presentation. Your organisation needs to be concerned with deploying a talent management strategy throughout the organisation in order to obtain the best possible results. And this strategy needs to be an initiative where various components are integrated. Hiring or developing great people is one thing, but it will certainly not be enough. Even though you may have great people, you may have lousy results so you will still end up with having a lousy company. So this means that results must be obtained, if not you fail. So obtaining desired results rests on aligning and integrating the key components of talent management. How do you do that?
What are the goals of the organisation and the objectives you expect your people to deliver? Do you have the people to accomplish this? Total Talent Acquisition: Where and how will you get the talent to fill the gaps you identified in planning? Employee Development: How do you train and prepare your people so they will be successful? Performance Management: Are your people successful and are they accomplishing the goals you set for them? Succession Planning: Do you have a plan for key people and roles?
It all starts with the end – now you probably wonder what I mean with that. We have not started yet and you are already at the end? I think it was Steven Covey if I remember well, who said that effective people start with the end. So let’s start with defining the needs and goals of the organisation? What is it that your organisation would like to achieve in 1, 2 or 3 years from now. Is it growth of sales, revenue or margin? Is it a growth of market share? Is it becoming the best company to work for? Whatever you determine it will be the beginning of your talent management strategy as the goal(s) will cascade down to all departments. Each department will require to contribute to the overall goals and objective and the key tasks need to be completed by their staff. Making sure that the departments plan their workforce and identify needs or possible gaps in terms of quantity and quality will form the basis for your talent management strategy. I will explain that further in the next slides.
Once your organisation defined the needs and gaps in the workforce planning, it may be clear that there an organisation needs to acquire specific skills or simply need to acquire more talent to achieve their goals and objectives. There are various talent pools for acquiring talent, including:• Internal Employees • External candidates for full time positions • Contingent workers • Offshore labour • Project and statement of work based labour
If your organisation will have a wide view on talent and is able to source talent from various sources, you should be able to acquire better talent than your competitors. At AGS we believe that total talent acquisitions means that anyone doing work for the organisation should be considered talent and therefore should be integrated in the total talent management strategy. Now here is why integration of components is crucial, today a lot of organisations do not have a comprehensive perspective on their workforce. HR is often only focused on their full time employees having a company badge, and too often exclude external employees. More often contingent workers in IT or business departments are managed by these departments and will determine the success of these departments without having HR involved. From an outside point of view organisations’ failure to integrate the strategy, sourcing, and evaluation efforts of all the talent pools will lead to great inefficiencies and lost opportunities to maximize performance. So combining these will be needed as well as ensuring that acquired talents will be successful.
After identifying needs and gaps and acquiring talent, it is now time to address the following question:“Are our people prepared and able to deliver the results we expect?” Knowing the goals and objectives for this and next year or the year after, your organisation may require different skills than you will have today. Obviously each organisation must understand the individual ability of each worker as it relates to the core competencies identified in the the strategic workforce planning. This should be integrated in the talent management strategy as one of the components. Personal profiles and resumes contain much of the information that needs to be considered in employee development. But only gathering information is not enough, what do you with it is even more important. You cannot expect that employee development is a simple stage that happens and ends. It will continue after you acquire and hire your talent and increases the probability of success. One of the first things you need to do with your acquired talent is execute the on-boarding process successfully. This more than showing where the coffee machine is and handing out a password. Your on-boarding process is all about getting your talent productive fast! Induction, training, e-learning, mentoring and making sure they know what is expected from them should be part of a good on-boarding process. Once we have done that we can hold them accountable, which leads to the next item performance management.
Last but certainly not least is succession planning. Every organisation has key people and key positions that are important to the success of the company and achievement of its goals. But simply achieving goals isn’t enough, being prepared for the future is also important. Depending on the history of your company or the industry it is active in, some companies have been around for hundreds of years. Other have just started in the last years but no matter how old or young your company is, objective is that it is here to stay – otherwise you would probably not be in business.
Perhaps it is a shock for some managers, but surrounding you with great talent that are able to replace is actually a good thing. Personally I believe that everyone should look to have a successor for his or her job. I hope you are not like me and manage this informal and based on gut feel, this how I often did it in the past. Serious talent management advocated proactively identifying key people in the organisation and develop a plan to manage those key people and key positions. Also technology can play a role here and will certainly help to streamline the process and planning as long as it is integrated or linked to other components. But simply having a talent management plan or installing talent management software isn’t enough. I strongly believe that winners in the war for talent will be those that invest time to define a clear talent management strategy and process for all components I showed you. Success of this total talent management strategy will depend on C-level commitment, which need to help remove obstacles and political boundaries. Too often key talent decides to leave an organisation if they do not see a clear perspective or plan and therefore talent management must be part of a company’s culture and not just an HR programme. Organisations need to have a more holistic strategy to talent management vs. departmentally as well as having a wide view on various talent pools, internally as well as externally.
So coming back from a total talent management theory, we need be looking at real life and translate that into business. It is clear that Global Business Trends have an immediate effect on the workforce of enterprises. Due to economic uncertainty in Europe, but also in Asia and other parts of the world most companies are actively manageing their cost and risks in order to stay competitive. A lot of companies are reducing headcount and are actively addressing the challenges around workforce planning. This year and years to come workforce planning – managing and working with the available skills and talented workers – is a major theme for large enterprises, regardless of your company’s industry. Aging workforce is probably a challenge that companies find difficult to face. Everyone knows that large enterprises will lose skilled workers and valuable knowledge, but due to uncertain economic conditions find it hard to come up with an answer how to deal with new generations on the work floor. In economies where unemployment figures are up, it is notable that a large part of unemployed people are young people. One example is the economy of Spain, where now 1 of 5 workers is unemployed and a whole generation of young, educated people may lack working experiences in years to come. In those economies where young people get jobs, the interest and engagement is different than current employed workers. New generations care more about having meaningful jobs, sustainable organisations and whether your company is doing good in terms of social responsibility. recruitment specialists social media such as LinkedIn, Xing and other platforms make it easier to identify passive job seekers and establish networking groups with special interests and/or skills. There are even sites such as Find.ly where recruiters can have an up-to-date social talent community of people who are interested in your company’s jobs. Already today, but even more importantly tomorrow and workforce planning is all about having the best skilled people available at times when you need them and you better know where and how you can find that talent. Due to uncertainty more and more companies are increasing the usage of contingent labour. Where in the past enterprises would have an occasional temp worker during the peak season or to replace a perm employee temporarily, almost everyone working for a large organisation has seen an increase of people working at your company who are not employees of that company. In just 20 years the percentage of of work allocated to contingent labour on average has increased from 6% in 1989 to more than 27% in 2009. Lately the percentage seems to have dropped again, but like it or not contingent labour now plays a significant role in providing both organisational capacity and capability. Not knowing exactly when to hire talent or knowing what type of talent to hire makes it difficult for organisations to decide what their recruitment teams should look like. In 2010 and beginning of 2011 it seemed that business was getting back to normal and a lot of companies started hiring again, but end of 2011 and beginning of 2012 show less activities when it comes to hiring talent. However I should note that this is not the same for all industries as there appears to be a mismatch of required skills and availability of skilled workers. Agile and flexible recruitment teams that can easily scale up or scale down are required and often non-core activities are outsourced to partners, so that internal teams can focus on the value add services they need to provide to their business.
The perspective on work-life balance will be different and once they have entered the workforce they look for instant gratification through promotion or other means. Personally I believe this is of all generations, because often I recognize the same ambitions that I had (and by the way still have) when I was younger. So we should not exaggarate and label all new generations to come. I wonder what that’s gonna be like with my kids, already they are using an iPad and get annoyed when an app is not doing what they expect it to do. With the internet and mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets many organisations have to rethink their talent acquisition and sourcing strategy. Facebook, LinkedIn and free jobboards are quickly replacing printed advertising and traditional jobboards such as Monster, CareerBuilder, Indeed and others. Social media plays an important role and many HR departments and corporate recruiters use social media for profiling or reference checking, although when asked they will immediately deny this due to privacy laws.
Additional Resources:
http://www.ere.net/2012/01/25/hr-still-struggling-to-be-strategic/
http://www.ere.net/2011/12/05/10-predictions-for-2012-the-top-trends-in-talent-management-and-recruiting/
http://www.taleo.com/researcharticle/what-talent-management
http://www.hrotoday.com/content/4552/total-talent-management
http://www.skillsportal.co.za/page/human-resource/1119702-The-changing-role-of-human-resources-management
http://blog.allegisgroupservices.com/post/2011/12/12/5-Steps-to-Building-Your-Holistic-Recruiting-Strategy-(Reactive-Recruiting-vs-Holistic-Recruiting).aspx
On Wednesday, May 2nd, Bruce Morton, Allegis Group Services' CMO, will be speaking at the HRO Today Forum. Join Bruce, and other top HR industry leaders and policy makers for an event of learning and networking.
Bruce Morton: Hi. I'm Bruce Morton, Chief Marketing Officer of Allegis Group Services.
I'm going to tell you about the great event that HRO Today are putting on:
An HRO Today Forum, in Washington, D.C., April the 30th to May the 2nd.
We've got a great lineup of speakers.
If you're in the world of HR, and you're challenged with finding great people and putting them into great jobs, it's the place to be.
The lineup includes the former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle.
And I'll be speaking myself, as well.
I'm going to be talking about the changing social contract.
So, hey, check out the website: HROTodayForum.com.
Hope to see you there.
Earlier in the evening a few friends and I had met up for happy hour at a popular downtown DC restaurant. Afterward, my friend Bill and I decided to grab a slice of pizza at the new Fuel Pizza that had opened up next door. Just after we settled in, the assistant manager approached a nearby table where a young man had apparently fallen asleep.
I suddenly realized that everyone else in the restaurant had some connection to the sleeping man. It was like a scene from a prairie dog den. Before the assistant manager walked over everyone was hunkered down staring at their laptops screens, but when he came over they all popped their heads up and many moved as if they might intervene in the discussion.
The back of every laptop had a variety of protest stickers and every one that I could see had an Anonymous sign. As my eyes darted from laptop to laptop I thought to look for the other telltale sign and found it hanging in the corner behind me: "Free Wi-Fi".
Yup. This was occupied territory. I had forgotten that just a few blocks away lay the main OccupyDC encampment. These were all occupiers coming in for a little food, drink, and wi-fi.
I've always been fascinated by the phenomenon of one group using the tools of another to attack that same group. Patton studied Rommel's tank strategies to in turn defeat him. The 9/11 terrorists used cell phones and the Internet to coordinate flying jetliners into skyscrapers -- all invented in America -- to attack the US. Now the occupiers use the laptops, free wi-fi, restaurant-space, and food of the very corporations they profess to oppose.
I'm not the first one to point out these ironies. But a recurring theme of my writing has been the role of HR in generating innovation, so I started wondering: what tools of Occupy could HR adopt to encourage innovation?
I don't profess to have a complete answer to that question. Actually, I'd like to get your thoughts. From what you know about the Occupy movement, what have you seen that HR execs could adapt for use inside of companies?
Share your thoughts and I'll put your ideas and questions along with my own to leadership-guru Jim Quigley, CEO-Emeritus of Deloitte and author of As One his great new book on how to motivate large groups of people to move and act as one. Jim will be a keynote speaker at the upcoming HRO Today Forum in Washington, DC on May 1-2.
About the Author: Richard Crespin is a successful entrepreneur, business and community organizer, and tireless advocate for global trade and corporate responsibility. He currently serves as the President of Member Services for SharedXpertise and the Executive Director of the Corporate Responsibility Officers Association. Click here to read more about Richard or connect with Richard on LinkedIn and Twitter
If someone told you that you could make yourself and your organization more competitive in business by increasing your fitness level how would you respond?
Organizations routinely state that their people are their greatest asset, often going so far as to call their workforce a competitive advantage. If that statement is true (and I believe it is in our company) then maximizing the capacity of these great assets further increases this competitive advantage. I recently listened to an interview with Tony Schwartz, President and CEO of an organization called The Energy Project, where he stated that our ability to increase our capacity is “the greatest potential source of competitive advantage that an individual or organization has in the next decade”. He went on to say that “capacity” is inside us, and the key to unlocking our potential is to increase our energy levels.
So how does one increase his or her energy level? In addition to making good lifestyle choices such as eating right and getting enough sleep, our energy level is directly tied to our fitness level. I know, this is a stunning revelation, right? However, something is not working in the way we balance our lives today. For a world that is innovating and advancing faster than ever before, we are headed in the opposite direction when it comes to our physical fitness and well-being. According to Harvard University the global obesity rate has doubled in the last 28 years. During that same period of time Body Mass Index (BMI) rose the fastest in the US, where two-thirds of Americans are now overweight or obese.
So what needs to change? Put yourself first. Schedule time to train. As kids, we didn't have to think about "getting back into shape." Physical activity was simply part of our daily lives. With today’s busy schedules at work and at home, it’s easy to say “I don’t have time.” This is a cop-out. Commit to some form of exercise that gets your heart rate up for 30 minutes a day and you will get the rest of the day’s activities done in 30 minutes less time. Granted, this is easier said than done. It will take effort and discipline, but you, alone have the ability to set your agenda for the day.
Still feel like your personal health and fitness will always come second to your responsibilities at the office?
If you are already physically fit and operating at peak performance please share your advice or tips on what’s working for you.
If you’re not where you want to be then here’s a suggestion: find a partner and commit to a challenge together. Something big enough that it will leave a pit in your stomach - preferably an event that has a fixed date. I recently discovered the benefits of running because a friend challenged me to run Hood-To-Coast with him. I am not a runner (or at least I wasn’t then). To be quite honest, we were at a social event when he laid down the challenge. Having consumed a little liquid courage that evening, I, of course said yes (I’m pretty sure this was part of his strategy). The next morning he sent me a text message to remind me that I committed to running with him. Not one to back down from a commitment, I did the only thing I could do – I scheduled time to train.
“The key is not the will to win … everybody has that. It is the will to prepare to win that is important.”
– Bobby Knight
“On Tuesday 22nd of November Allegis Group Services and Staffing Industry Analysts presented a webinar about MSP and VMS Trends in Western-Europe. With more than 100 registered directors and senior managers responsible for and/or involved with procurement of contingent staff, the attendants of the webinar were informed about the continued growth of the MSP and VMS markets per region. Based on the results of Staffing Industry Analysts’ VMS MSP Landscape Report 2011 figures showed the trends per region, evolution of staffing procurement models and differences in maturity between markets. Allegis Group Services was proud to sponsor this webinar as being the world’s leading provider of neutral managed services solutions and world’s 2nd largest provider of SOW managed services solutions according to the SIA report.”
Bruce Morton, AGS CMO, on the coming TalentNet Live Recruiting Conference and how social media is changing the landscape of recruiting.
Bruce will be joined by some of the world's top minds in Social Media and Recruiting. They will be sharing their tips for Blogging, Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Employer Branding, Content Development, Profile Optimization, Cold Calling to Warm Calling, Personal and Corporate Branding, Location / Mobile Recruiting, and the latest tools.
Speakers you’ll be learning from and networking with include: William Tincup, Crystal Miller,Jason Seiden, Veronica Ludwig, Amber Osborne, Matt Charney, Craig Fisher, Trish McFarlane,Ryan Leary, Lars Schmidt, Maren Hogan, , Sarah White, Marianthe Verver, Geoff Webb… and more!
Over the past few weeks we have seen many images that have brought us back to that day 10 years ago that will be etched in our minds forever. September 11, 2001 was not only a day that changed the way we look at the world and our own security as Americans but it changed the face of industry as we knew it. So I thought it might be interesting to take a look back at where we were, what we have become and where we are headed in the future. You may say what does this have to do with recruiting; well we no longer think in terms of recruiting but today it is about Human Capital, partnerships and outsourcing. The change in how we think about the workplace may be directly attributed to things that have taken place over the last ten years - the growth of technology, the arrival of a remote workforce and the disappearance of some of the major players in the financial industry. So let’s take a look at where we were and where we are today and see what the future holds.
Barely a day went by without news of one dotcom company or another going bust. Closure happening at the rate of more than one every 24 hours. The dotcom crash was well documented in magazines like the Industry Standard. We all would witness the phenomenon of the pink slip party. Apple, which had been in the doldrums for some time, started finding its way out of the woods once it announced the launch of Mac OSX early in the year. And how the company needed it: US sales had already fallen by 40% and the late Steve Jobs was struggling to make profit with its iMac and Cube computers. Today Apple holds the lion’s share of online music, phone and tablet equipment with the inception of the iPod, iPhone and iPad. These tools are now a part of our everyday life and no recruitment team would be complete without it. Blackberries were thought of as a fruit and the dialup modem was a part of everyone’s household. Today we have high speed and wireless internet and are connected to our businesses no matter where we are. We have become a society of 24/7 virtual workforce that can be connected from anywhere in the world.
The changes that have accord in staffing are almost as dramatic as those of technology since technology has become such an integral part of the recruiters’ arsenal. Today, instead of searching resumes through Monster or CareerBuilder, we are now using tools like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter to provide the candidate base we need to be successful. There are about 200 million people on the professional networking site LinkedIn, estimates Mark Weinstein, executive VP of Atlanta-based firstPRO. "If it was a country, it would be the sixth-largest country in the world," he says. Professional and social networking has now taken the place of career fairs and golf courses as we strive for faster and more direct ways to find talent. Candidate interviewing, testing, training and hiring have moved to the internet with tools such as, Montage, HireVue, Green Interview Jobs and Interview Stream. Off shoring and contingent workforces have become a staple of the global economy as companies fight to keep their cost down and become as adaptive as the world around them.
Now that we have seen what the last ten years have brought our industry, what will the future hold? Well many analysts believe that the use of contingent labor will continue to grow as companies shift with the ebb and flow of our economy. Baby Boomers will retire and the workforce shortage will continue to grow. Social networking with become more predominant with the usage of tools like Find.ly and other social media tools. Diversity will play a huge part of every recruiter's sourcing strategy as OFCCP and EEOC regulations become more a part of our vocabulary. Finally the day of the applicant tracking system will be replaced by Total Talent Management which will ensure our partnership with the rest of the HR community. It has been a wild ten years and we should all be sitting down as the next ten years will define what our industry will become for decades to come.
The U.S. economy just shed 8 million jobs. While many companies are trying to find solid ground to stand on and looking to invest in infrastructure and growth, they are finding it surprising and difficult to find solid IT job candidates. How could this be? The danger all companies face is believing that what they hear on the nightly news; panic, desperation, high unemployment rates, is true for all types of workers. During this webinar, AGS labor economist Ron Hetrick will show the truth about what has been happening to the IT labor pool since Y2K. Learn how competitive the market is and get solid tips on how to find and successfully recruit today’s IT workforce.
Ron Hetrick brings nearly 20 years of labor force economic experience to AGS. Primarily, Ron works with companies across different industries as a site selection and workforce planning consultant. He also provides economic analysis for the long-term strategic growth of Allegis Group and its operating companies. Prior to working for Allegis Group, Hetrick spent nearly eight years as an economist with the Bureau of Labor Statistics in Washington D.C. He was a supervisory economist overseeing the monthly employment estimates and acted as the primary media liaison for manufacturing employment for the division. Quoted by NBC, CNN, USA Public Radio, The Wall Street Journal, and numerous other news agencies, Hetrick provided analysis for Alan Greenspan, The Council of Economic Advisors, and Congress. He also published three articles on labor trends in the Monthly Labor Review and continues to publish white papers on sector hiring trends and contingent rate card development and rate philosophies.
Erik Karff, Manager of Marketing and Social Media for Allegis Group Services, recently held an exclusive interview with Bryan Pena, Vice President, Contingent Workforce Strategies and Research, on the upcoming CWS Summit in Las Vegas October 4th and 5th.
Bryan offered us some outstanding insights into the upcoming conference and we are sharing them with you.
Here is what Bryan had to say:
Bryan Pena: Now in its 7th year, the CWS Summit is the largest event anywhere dedicated to contingent workforce management and services procurement personnel. In simpler terms, anyone who in any way is involved with handling external labor resources for their company can get value from attending. This could be someone from Human Resources and Procurement of course but we also see participants who are in finance, operations or Information Technology as well.
Bryan Pena: The attendance list looks like the who’s who of corporate America. Companies like 3M, Apple, AstraZeneca, Cargill, Citigroup, HP, Delta Airlines, Facebook and hundreds of others. Whether you manage a CW program of seven billion or seven million, there is value in attending.
Bryan Pena: While the agenda covers many HR and procurement topic areas it is important to remember that this event is only dedicated to issues facing contingent workforce managers. That being said, nowhere else will you get such a focused perspective on this rapidly growing field. Since economist universally agree that the contingent workforce is becoming an ever more critical component in today’s volatile economy anyone who wants to stay on top of this complex field should strongly consider attending.
Bryan Pena: But seriously, we have a great agenda this year, and I’m not just saying that because I wrote it! For one we have a great set of keynotes; Dan Shapiro from the Harvard Program on Negotiation will be coming to share his perspective on how to improve supplier relations. Also, we are honored to have the former Secretary of Labor and professor Robert Reich coming to share his perspective on the future of work. While the keynotes are reasons to attend in and of themselves we are offering an assortment of panel discussions moderated by SIA staff on anything from Six Sigma, to cost savings, to program office construction. Taking a cue from previous years, participants in these panels will be organized by program maturity to allow attendees to select those sessions which best apply to them: Beginning, Experienced and Advanced.
Also, we are offering a selection of dedicated topic based workshops. These are meant to be more detailed explorations of specific areas of interest to contingent workforce managers. We have three such dedicated workshops scheduled this year: Crafting an RFP, Data Analytics and Recruitment Process Outsourcing.
Finally, while it is hard to deny that there is a lot of valuable material to learn, and attending will definitely help the Contingent Workforce manager do their job better, lets don’t forget it’s in Las Vegas, so the non-conference atmosphere will be second to none!