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MEASURING SUCCESS
Recruiting professionals are now being accountable for measurable results.
THE EFFECTS OF DOWNSIZING
A look at the impact downsizing has had upon salaries of the displaced.
INTERNET RECRUITING
Using Reference.com.
SELECTING WINNERS
How to know a good one when you see one.
COLLEGE SALARIES
The latest salary survey results are in, and it's not good news for employers.
In many of our companies, the recruitment and staffing function has suddenly found itself
in the spotlight due to diminishing labor supplies. While this attention may be a
welcome change for most recruiting professionals, it has also brought greater demands for
accountability from us.
A few years ago, we could manage our function by reporting the number of jobs opened and the
number of we filled each month and management was satisfied. But today, with turnover
rates in the double digits and vacancy rates running ever higher, business survival is
at stake. Now we are expected to provide real-time metrics in categories that say far
more than how busy wee are. We are expected to show what our efforts are contributing
to the bottom line.
The metrics that meet these expectations fall, for the most part, into one of these six
categories: Quality, Utilization, Activity, Retention, Time and $ (costs). QUART$ provide
the type of metrics COO's and CFO's can relate to. They relate to business strategies,
expenses, return on investments, and results. This is how most businesses measure success.
Quality is most easily measured by customer satisfaction. If the new employee is
performing well and producing results within or beyond expectations, the client will be
happy. Surveys and performance reviews are the best sources of this information, but
they do take time to develop.
The utilization or production rate of various recruitment techniques allows the
assessment of the return on investment of specific recruitment strategies. If a
particular sourcing technique shows diminishing returns, a change of strategy can be
easily justified.
Activity measures may not directly effect the bottom line, but certainly play an
important role in determining how to staff the recruitment function. The volume of
recruitment needs will dictate the number of recruiters required to satisfy them on a
timely basis.
Retention is critical for many reasons. The duration or tenure of employment measured
by function, department, location or source of recruitment can speak volumes about
quality, culture, leadership, competitiveness and return on investment.
For many, time has become the key metric. Time to fill is often deemed more critical
than cost per hire because how long a position is vacant equates to considerable losses
in revenues, production, and, perhaps, end customer satisfaction. For individual
recruiters, time to fill is often the key discriminator between being busy and being
productive.
Costs per hire, costs of turnover, costs of recruitment strategies will always capture the
attention of management, and provide the basis for planning future recruitment strategies.
IT has become painfully evident that one of the major effects of our downsizing efforts
of the last decade has been the diminished earning power of many of our older workers.
There were over 2 million workers laid off in 1993 and 1994. By 1996, only two-thirds
of them had full-time jobs again, and over half of them were earning less than in their
previous jobs. More than one-third of these same workers suffered pay cuts of greater
than 20%.
Unlike the 1980's when layoffs principally affected the blue-collar worker in the
manufacturing sector, by the mid-1990's, 60% of the layoffs touched white-collared
workers. The Labor Department study of those workers found that 79% of those displaced
two years earlier were working again in 1996.
On average, the median weekly earnings of full-time reemployed workers declined by
about 14%, despite the fact that 47% of the affected workers equalled or exceeded
their former pay rates.
The least likely to be reemployed were workers over the age of 54. Many of these
people dropped out of the work force either by taking early retirement or starting
their own businesses. The Labor Department survey was unable to determine the
number and level of earnings of those who may have migrated to entrepreneurial ventures.
Using Reference.com
With the public stampede toward the internet as the new place to meet and do business,
is it any wonder that it is rapidly becoming the place to both find jobs and find
people for jobs?
This month's internet recruiting tip is how to use Reference.com to find resumes in over
150,000 different news groups archives - all for free! USENET news groups, email lists
and web forums are all included.
Using your browser, enter the URL for Reference.com, http://www.reference.com, and
you'll reach the search input screen. Go to the bottom of the page and click on
Templates, and then on Employee Search under Business & Economy.
We recently input a search for C++ and expanded the time from Feb. 17 to April 27, 1998.
We found 1916 hits, 35 to 40% of which appeared to be legitimate resumes. If you are
duplicating our search, you will find a lot of job postings as well. As in any other
search search engine, you can refine your search parameters so that you'll get
candidates who are more closely aligned to your specific job requirements.
Reference.com also offers other templates to assit you in constructing inquiries into
news groups in other areas of interest.
You may find this engine also effective in performing reverse searches. When a company's
domain name shows up in the URL of one of your responses, try eliminating one word at a
time from the end of the URL string to see what else you might discover. You might
even find a company's entire employee directory!
As is the case with any other search engine, you may need to play with it for awhile
to become adept at drilling down to the specifics you are seeking.
Try it. You'll be a web-surfing recruiter in no time!
Now more than ever, employers need to make interviewing and selection a priority. When
a good candidate comes along, you cannot expect that person to wait while you look around
for someone just a little bit better. With demand running so high, you snooze, you lose.
Speed is important, but perhaps even more important is fit. Most hiring managers tend
to focus on the technical skills the candidate can bring to the company. True, in most
jobs, if a person does not have the technical know how, he or she will not be able to
perform the job adequately. However, having those skills alone does not guarantee
success either.
A proper fit can only occur if we know all the factors that are necessary to succeed, or
can cause a person to fail, in a job. By establishing and measuring each candidate
against a pre-determined selection profile, we are more likely to recognize a winner when
we see one, and less likely to hire someone who may be technically competent, but lacks
other critical skills.
Most jobs today require people who can speak and write well, set high goals for themselves
and others, effectively manage their time and resources, adapt well to frequent cahnge,
get along well with coworkers, and possess good analytical skills.
Failure in many professional level positions often results when we hire someone who
does not have all these capabilities. Also, people who require constant supervision
and direction. or people who are incapable of modifying their style or behavior to
work effectively with others can be high risks.
There will be other unique factors that will be appropriate to a selection profile for
any given job. The important thing is not to compromise on our selection standards
once they have been established. Too often, pressure to fill a position, or the lack of
many qualified and available candidates lead us to compromise our standards. We tend
to rationalize the selection decision only to pay the greater price for that poor
selection later on.
With a clearly defined selection profile, it becomes far easier for hiring authorities
to make timely decisions on individual candidates as they are seen, rather than needing
to compare one candidate against the other to determine who might be better. When you
find a winner, hire 'em!
The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) has recently updated the
average salaries being given to 1998 college graduates for a number of high demand
disciplines.
Here are the reported average salaries for Bachelors degrees in:
Computer Science - $40,417; 8.6 % higher than 1997
Mechanical Engineering - $40,117; 4.8 % higher than 1997
Chemical Engineering - $44,735
Electrical Engineering - $41,192; 4.2 % higher than 1997
Civil Engineering - $35,251; 6.7 % higher than 1997
Accounting - $32,407; 7.5 % higher than 1997
MIS - $38,229; 8.8 % higher than 1997
Economics/Finance - $32,522; 63.8 % higher than 1997
To contract NACE for more information about this survey and other prgorammatic benefits
of being a NACE member, call 1-800-544-5272, or visit their web site at www.jobweb.com.