The Top 25 Recruiting Trends, Problems, and Opportunities 

Even if you work in a corporate recruiting function with low resources or minimal expectations for change, every recruiter still has a professional obligation to maintain their awareness of the latest trends and predictions. I have grouped 25 predictions of the leading corporate recruiting trends for 2014 into four separate sections. Part 1 includes two sections that cover 14 new opportunities and continuing current trends. Part 2 (to be published next week) includes the final two sections, which cover 11 remaining trends that cover new challenges and areas that will continue to diminish in importance.

Section 1: The Hottest Recruiting Opportunities 

The eight top opportunities that will dominate strategic corporate recruiting during include:

1. The competition for top talent intensifies — you could call 2014 “the year that intense recruiting competition returned.” That is because after years of slack hiring, the competition for top performers and technical talent will increase over the next year in many industries to the point where current recruiting resources and tools will be stretched to the limit. Aggressiveness, the need for counteroffers, higher rejection rates, and a renewed focus on recruiting the currently employed will all return to prominence. As a result of this increased competition, executives will begin to put pressure on recruiting to produce new recruiting approaches that provide them with a competitive talent advantage.
2. A metric-driven employee referral program  becomes the dominant hiring source – as more firms adopt quality of hire metrics, it becomes even clearer that well-designed employer referral programs produce high performers, high retention rates, and if managed correctly, they are faster, just as diverse, and often cheaper than all other sources. Referrals are obviously not new but the results that they produce have been recently strengthened by the astonishing growth and usage of social media. The impact of social media has been so strong that that the referral hire target for top firms is now approaching a dominant 50 percent of all hires. The most effective programs will adopt specialized types of referrals including assigned referrals, proactive referrals, college referrals, and non-employee referrals. Overall the 2014 strategic referral goal should be to build a recruiting culture which makes every employee a 24/7 talent scout, and to channel these employee talent discoveries through a data-driven employee referral program. At the same time, many of the recently introduced vendor supplied external referral programs will begin their inevitable decline.
3. Predictive metrics and the use of big data move from interesting to essential – after years of struggling with “historical metrics” that have had only minimal impact, recruiting leaders are beginning to follow the lead of the rest of the business in adapting advanced metrics. This new focus will be on real-time metrics that let managers know what’s happening today, and predictive metrics, which alert everyone about upcoming recruiting problems and opportunities, so that they can act appropriately with time to spare. Although still in its infancy, a handful of vendors are beginning to show that you can actually identify hundreds of top performers who are not currently looking for a job (the so-called passives) using external “big data.” These advanced metric developments are on top of the established trend of shifting recruiting toward a data-supported decision model.
4. Employer branding returns as the only long-term recruiting strategy – after years of minimal funding and attention, strategic employer branding begins its return as the only long-term recruiting strategy. This shift is partially due to increased recruiting competition but it also comes about because social media now makes it so easy for others to virally spread either positive or negative comments covering working at your firm. The willingness of current and former employees to comment online about their work environment increases the impact of firms that reveal what employees and applicants say (i.e. Glassdoor, LinkedIn, and Universum).  Talent leaders are also gradually learning that providing a weak candidate experience can quickly damage that brand. There is now a growing division between the one percent top employer brand firms in each industry (e.g. Google, Facebook, Deloitte, P&G, and McKinsey) and the remaining 99 percent of firms that simply offer “paycheck jobs”. This dramatic and perhaps insurmountable difference in brand strength and employee treatment may permanently limit the capability of the remaining 99 percent to attract any more-than-average talent.
5. Recruiting finally adopts the practice of monetizing its business impacts – even though it has long been a standard business practice, recruiting is finally beginning to move away from its long-held attempt to “align with business goals” and instead focus on having a direct impact on business goals. Because revenue is one of the prime corporate goals, by quantifying the revenue impacts of great compared to average and weak hires, recruiting can now convincingly demonstrate its “highest of all talent function business impacts” to executives. Demonstrating the direct connection between recruiting results and improved business results will eventually supplant quality of hire as the most important recruiting measurement. By monetizing its revenue impacts, recruiting can make a continuous business case, which will provide it with the necessary funding to meet this latest hiring surge.
6. A focus on becoming a serial innovation firm increases the need for recruiting innovators – the wild economic success of serial innovation driven firms like Apple, Google, and Facebook have demonstrated to executives the high economic impact of hiring, retaining, and managing innovators. The renewed expectation for rapid corporate growth means that more innovators must be recruited. That simply can’t happen unless current recruiting systems are redesigned so that they can now effectively recruit and hire these hard-to-land innovators.
7. Boomerangs become a primary target once again — boomerang rehires have proven to be one of the highest quality of hire sources, and this new talent shortage will return them to prominence after years of inattention. As the competition for talent heats up, the best firms will re-energize alumni groups and they will use them as the mechanism for bringing back the very best former employees with a proven track record (among the many who were recently released). This increased emphasis will eventually lead to boomerang rehires reaching nearly 15 percent of all hires.
8. Accepting social media profiles in lieu of resumes opens the door to many passives – the unabated corporate goal of targeting and recruiting those top prospects who are not in job search mode”cannot be met if an up-to-date resume is required. That is because these individuals often resist applying for a job simply because they don’t have the time to update their resume. Although there are still legal and administrative hurdles, more and more firms are learning that accepting a social media profile alone (usually a LinkedIn profile) is more than adequate at least initially to begin the hiring process.

Section 2: Currently Impactful Trends That Will Continue to Remain Important

Six major corporate recruiting trends that have been prominent during the last year will continue to be significant corporate recruiting trends during the next year.

1. The mobile platform continues to be a critical tool – even though last year was “the year of the mobile platform,” the impact of this platform in recruiting will continue to expand and grow. The emergence of the technical capability that allows the direct “instant” application for jobs from mobile phones will soon become mainstream.  A multitude of startups will continue their development of a variety of recruiting-focused mobile phone apps.
2. A data-driven approach to operations continues to be the benchmark standard – even though most business functions have long ago shifted to data-driven decision making, the practice is strikingly unusual within recruiting. Google continues to separate itself from every other firm in its comprehensive data-driven approach to recruiting and its use of predictive metrics. Its recent data-driven research on the ineffectiveness of many traditional recruiting tools can only be classified as groundbreaking.
3. Live video interviewing steadily grows in acceptance – live video interviews has now proven its effectiveness, so its use will continue to expand until it becomes the standard practice, at least for initial interviews.
4. On-line candidate assessment continues toward the mainstream – as online technical knowledge and skill assessment options become cheaper and more effective, they will continue their growth until they become mainstream. Their impact is high because they reduce unnecessary interviews and they can dramatically improve the quality of hire.
5. Remote work continues to expand the talent pool – the growth of technology and the willingness of managers to accept remote work positions will continue to dramatically expand the number of available recruits for those remote work jobs. This shift to remote work will also force recruiting to increase its capability to find and land candidates around the globe.
6. Accelerated internal movement is still needed – continued uneven growth in business units will mean that there will be a much greater need for the rapid movement of current employees into new areas where they can have a higher impact. The most effective solutions have involved either using corporate recruiters to proactively move underused employees or encouraging employee referrals to quickly identify a wider range of talent for internal openings.

via Dr. John Sullivan 

“Gainful Employment”

On Friday, March 14, for the second time in less than three years, the U.S. Department of Education has proposed “Gainful Employment” regulations that could make it more difficult for some of our students to realize their educational goals.

The proposed Gainful Employment rule will affect federal financial aid and may limit choices as to the types of programs that could be offered at your school, affecting current and future students.

Unfortunately, this rule would only apply to certain institutions, while other schools, such as public and private non-profit colleges and universities, would not be held to the same standards.

Please visit www.SaveStudentChoice.com to learn more about the rule and locate your elected officials.  Your voice can make a difference in protecting student choice and creating a level playing field for all colleges and universities.

Thank you for your time and continued support.

(via Jonathan Morris) 

How to Ensure your Resume gets Read by a Human

HOW TO ENSURE YOUR RESUME GETS READ BY A HUMAN [INFOGRAPHIC]

This infographic by CyberCoders gives you the top tips to make sure your resume doesn’t get rejected by an ATS and actually read by a human.

Takeaways:

• 72% of the time an ATS (Applicant Tracking System) will see your resume before a human.
• Make sure you don’t use any fancy fonts!
• Tactfully sprinkle key words within the resume to make sure it makes it through the system.

RELATED: 7 Resume Mistakes You Probably Didn’t Realise

10 Reasons Your Top Talent Will Leave You

Have you ever noticed leaders spend a lot of time talking about talent, only to make the same mistakes over and over again? Few things in business are as costly and disruptive as unexpected talent departures. With all the emphasis on leadership development, I always find it interesting so many companies seem to struggle with being able to retain their top talent. In today’s column, I’ll share some research, observations, and insights on how to stop the talent door from revolving.

Ask any CEO if they have a process for retaining and developing talent and they’ll quickly answer in the affirmative. They immediately launch into a series of soundbites about the quality of their talent initiatives, the number of high-potentials in the nine box, blah, blah, blah. As with most things in the corporate world, there is too much process built upon theory and not nearly enough practice built on experience.

When examining the talent at any organization look at the culture, not the rhetoric – look at the results, not the commentary about potential. Despite some of the delusional perspective in the corner office, when we interview their employees, here’s what they tell us:  

• More than 30% believe they’ll be working someplace else inside of 12 months.
• More than 40% don’t respect the person they report to.
• More than 50% say they have different values than their employer.
• More than 60% don’t feel their career goals are aligned with the plans their employers have for them.
• More than 70% don’t feel appreciated or valued by their employer.

So, for all those employers who have everything under control, you better start re-evaluating. There is an old saying that goes; “Employees don’t quit working for companies, they quit working for their bosses.” Regardless of tenure, position, title, etc., employees who voluntarily leave, generally do so out of some type of perceived disconnect with leadership.

Here’s the thing – employees who are challenged, engaged, valued, and rewarded (emotionally, intellectually & financially) rarely leave, and more importantly, they perform at very high levels. However if you miss any of these critical areas, it’s only a matter of time until they head for the elevator. Following are 10 reasons your talent will leave you – smart leaders don’t make these mistakes:

1. You Failed To Unleash Their Passions: Smart companies align employee passions with corporate pursuits. Human nature makes it very difficult to walk away from areas of passion. Fail to understand this and you’ll unknowingly be encouraging employees to seek their passions elsewhere.

2. You Failed To Challenge Their Intellect: Smart people don’t like to live in a dimly lit world of boredom. If you don’t challenge people’s minds, they’ll leave you for someone/someplace that will.1. You Failed To Unleash Their Passions: Smart companies align employee passions with corporate pursuits. Human nature makes it very difficult to walk away from areas of passion. Fail to understand this and you’ll unknowingly be encouraging employees to seek their passions elsewhere.

3. You Failed To Engage Their Creativity: Great talent is wired to improve, enhance, and add value. They are built to change and innovate. They NEED to contribute by putting their fingerprints on design. Smart leaders don’t place people in boxes – they free them from boxes. What’s the use in having a racehorse if you don’t let them run?

4. You Failed To Develop Their Skills:Leadership isn’t a destination – it’s a continuum. No matter how smart or talented a person is, there’s always room for growth, development, and continued maturation. If you place restrictions on a person’s ability to grow, they’ll leave you for someone who won’t.

5. You Failed To Give Them A Voice: Talented people have good thoughts, ideas, insights, and observations. If you don’t listen to them, I can guarantee you someone else will.

6. You Failed To Care: Sure, people come to work for a paycheck, but that’s not the only reason. In fact, many studies show it’s not even the most important reason. If you fail to care about people at a human level, at an emotional level, they’ll eventually leave you regardless of how much you pay them.

7. You Failed to Lead: Businesses don’t fail, products don’t fail, projects don’t fail, and teams don’t fail – leaders fail. The best testament to the value of leadership is what happens in its absence – very little. If you fail to lead, your talent will seek leadership elsewhere.

8. You Failed To Recognize Their Contributions: The best leaders don’t take credit – they give it. Failing to recognize the contributions of others is not only arrogant and disingenuous, but it’s as also just as good as asking them to leave.

9. You Failed To Increase Their Responsibility: You cannot confine talent – try to do so and you’ll either devolve into mediocrity, or force your talent seek more fertile ground. People will gladly accept a huge workload as long as an increase in responsibility comes along with the performance and execution of said workload.

10. You Failed To Keep Your Commitments: Promises made are worthless, but promises kept are invaluable. If you break trust with those you lead you will pay a very steep price. Leaders not accountable to their people, will eventually be held accountable by their people.

If leaders spent less time trying to retain people, and more time trying to understand them, care for them, invest in them, and lead them well, the retention thing would take care of itself. Thoughts?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/mikemyatt/2012/12/13/10-reasons-your-top-talent-will-leave-you/

What's at stake for education in the fall elections?

With Election Day two months away, both of the major-party candidates for president have been largely silent about education policy. It's no surprise. President Obama and Governor Romney believe that their fortunes depend on whether people think the economy is getting better (or not), and how intrusive the government should be. Since most Americans have already made up their minds on those two things, the campaigns are targeting a sliver of swing voters in key states, trying to convince them that one of the candidates is likeable and the other is dangerous. Federal education policy is not a big enough wedge issue to move many swing voters this year. And yet this year's elections are crucial to much of what we do as educators. Billions of dollars will be spent in different ways for education based entirely on what happens in the November elections. What are the key races? Look very close to home. Nearly a million people (you read that correctly) will have their names on ballots this fall, and many of them care about education. They are our mayors, city councilors, school board members, and legislators of every type. We are a tremendously diverse democracy of more than 511,000 elected officials, representing voters in 3,033 counties, 14,561 school districts, and 35,949 cities and towns. Pause over those numbers for a moment and consider how education policy grows out of such varied places. The most recent (2009) numbers are impressive. State and local governments employ 6,260,224 in the education sector, including 86,417 professors and other instructors at public colleges and universities. By contrast, the federal Department of Education employs just 4,611 people nationwide, and less than six cents of every dollar spent on K-12 public education comes from the federal government. Six cents of every dollar. The rest comes from - and is largely controlled by - policymakers outside of Washington, D.C. In the K-12 world, there is a waning fiction that "No Child Left Behind"? (NCLB) dictated what teachers had to teach and hamstrung how they could do it. If that was true, it no longer is. Twenty-six of the 50 states have opted out of the formal NCLB targets since February 2012, and the remaining states will probably follow suit within a year. States - not the federal government - are taking the lead in deciding what grade-specific tests and targets are appropriate. Federal funds to higher education come in essentially three ways: loan subsidies and guarantees for tuition (mainly given to individual), aid to states that is then allocated to public colleges and universities (about $10 billion per year), and federal research support, primarily to large public and private universities (thank you, by the way). In two of these three categories - direct aid to states, and research dollars - federal money will be cut regardless who is elected in November. That is the reality that you should be preparing for. In Idaho, for example, Governor Butch Otter has already asked every state agency to brace for a 20 percent reduction of aid from Washington. Our long-term federal debt has become so burdensome that grants and aid will be cut, and it really does not matter which party controls Congress or the White House. Where does this leave you, and what can you do in the coming months? The numbers are fairly straight forward. Ninety-four percent of all money spent on K-12 education comes from state and local sources. More than 90 percent of all spending on public colleges and universities comes from state sources and endowments. The pull toward national standards imagined in NCLB has slackened, and federal money is getting harder to find. Since education policy is the work of state and local governments, then focus your energy there. If you have ever considered running for school board, then do it. If a local non-profit needs your help to redesign a curriculum, then pitch in. If you have never met your state representative, then make an appointment. If your mayor has never been in your lecture hall or your department, then send an invitation. There are more than 511,000 elected representatives in the United States. Are you one of them? Do you know someone who is? Democracy - like education itself - bubbles up through personal interactions at the individual level. Those are the kinds of relationships, and the kinds of elections, that need more of your attention between now and Election Day. Posted by David C. King

Ranking Web of World Universities

Since 2004, the Ranking Web (or Webometrics Ranking) is published twice a year (data is collected during the first weeks of January and July for being public at the end of both months), covering about 20,000 Higher Education Institutions worldwide.

Click link below for more info:

www.webometrics.info/about_rank.html

Three Key Lessons from Going Green on Campus

The path to a cleaner, healthier campus begins in the classroom, office and dorm room. Across Harvard's 12-plus schools and administrative units we are building a culture of sustainability in partnership with our students, staff and faculty. We hope the innovative and creative approaches, programs and projects put into place by our community will serve as a replicable model for change at other large, complex institutions including universities, businesses and government. We also hope to inspire our students, future global contributors and leaders to incorporate sustainability into their lives and professional endeavors.

We have found that a commitment to creating a sustainable community directly ties into our academic and research mission and it also helps our bottom line. Energy efficiency measures and green building techniques are saving us millions in utility costs per year, often with a relatively short payback. Beyond fiscal savings there are other significant benefits such as improved operations efficiencies, improved productivity, health benefits and a more engaged, collaborative community. We also work to constantly evolve our efforts based on feedback from the community and the experience of our peer academic institutions and increasingly other sectors.

Said Harvard University President Drew Faust, "As a university we have a special responsibility to address complex global problems, like climate change and environmental sustainability, both with academics and research but also by turning the findings of that research into action."

As part of this effort we struggle with the same questions many others do. How do we keep people engaged? How do we ensure we're on the cutting edge? Several key lessons have emerged that we keep in mind and I'd like to share with others working on sustainability initiatives (and hear your ideas too):
Strong Leadership That Sets Clear, Aggressive Goals. Harvard's goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 30% by 2016, including growth unified our schools and units, requiring them to focus on very specific energy reduction targets. This goal was adopted by our senior leadership--President Faust and all of our deans, which has aligned the university in pursuit of this goal. In addition, our comprehensive Green Building Standards set clear energy reduction, resource conservation and LEED targets for all construction and renovation projects. As a result, Harvard saves over $9 million annually just from the over 800 energy conservation measures that have already been implemented in order to reduce emissions and save energy.
Engage the Entire Community. The Harvard Office for Sustainability acts as a centralized catalyst for change, facilitating opportunities for students, faculty and staff to come together to learn from each other and share best practices that makes us all stronger. The office led a strategic planning process for Harvard's GHG reduction goal that engaged over 200 faculty, students and staff from every level of our organization. Every major policy change or initiative is reviewed and approved by representatives from all our schools and units, giving everyone a say in the ultimate outcome. Likewise, our Green Building Standards require that occupants be engaged earlier in project development so that future design considerations and decisions include their concerns, feedback and ideas. We also create training and provide information about sustainable building operations for occupants upon move-in. And Harvard's annual Green Carpet Awards ceremony was created in 2009 as an opportunity for our entire community to nominate, recognize and celebrate our "green heroes"--the students, staff and faculty who play an exemplary role in helping Harvard achieve its sustainability goals.
Tools and Resources That Spark Action. Harvard has focused on developing tools and resources to empower our community to take action. A four-tiered Green Office Program encourages employees to conserve resources by providing them with tips and guidelines in nine topic or impact locations. This program also ties to our Green Teams--individuals who adopt green practices in their departments and units. A Life Cycle Costing calculator was created with input from administrators and facilities across the university to allow schools and project managers to prioritize building projects that are economically viable and environmentally beneficial. Our website -- www.green.harvard.edu -- is a university-wide resource providing stories and profiles of best practices, including LEED case studies, so the community can learn from each other.
At the end of the day the foundation for all of our work is our people -- from President Faust and the deans, to the facility directors, building managers and project managers at all of our schools and on to the faculty, students, and staff who work, live and learn in our greener, healthier buildings. Without action and involvement from everyone in our community our progress would not be possible. And that is perhaps the most important lesson for us all to remember -- you are only as strong as your people and your success depends on the level to which you empower and engage your entire community.
by Heather Henriksen, Director, Harvard Office for Sustainability