Making Recruiting and Retention Work - Panel Discussion

Workforce, April, 2001

How can HR find the best job candidates despite an uncertain economy? How can it keep the best employees? Workforce asked industry leaders to discuss powerful strategies you can use right now.

* Given the roller-coaster economic climate of the past year, how will HR need to change its approach in the way it recruits and retains employees in the coming months?

Jeff Yehle: Staffing needs to move through the interview-and-offer process quickly and thoroughly. corporations no longer have the luxury of comparing and contrasting numerous candidates ad infinitum only to conclude that the first candidate they saw was the best hire. Staffing also needs to be pro-active in seeking the passive job seeker by identifying creative ways to source candidates. Regarding retention, corporations must strive to be the employer of choice by creating a positive environment, offering challenging assignments that foster continued personal growth.

Thomas J. Ferrara: The volatile job market demands that HR executives be more aggressive in finding and retaining employees. The lure of stock options has dwindled dramatically with the wave of failed dotcom ventures. Today, effective strategies for recruiting and retention include large referral bonuses and milestone bonuses, which are given out every few years of continuous employment. Recruiters should also store resumes in a searchable database for the long haul, rather than toss resumes after the standard three to six months.

* What methods should HR employ to evaluate return on investment of recruitment products and services?

Don Ramer: The obvious answer is the number of leads that can turn into hires, but you also should consider various "hidden costs" that a good recruitment tool can eliminate. Considering it can cost up to $10,000 to locate, hire, and train an employee, determine how efficient your tool is. Do you have to spend hours completing administrative tasks? How much sweat equity do you have to invest in the system to get what you need?

Jeff Yehle: Simple cost-per-hire analysis fails to incorporate the various contributions different employees make to the overall success of the organization. Employee effectiveness must be factored into any true cost-per-hire analysis. Further consideration must be paid to both the residual effects of recruitment campaigns and the cost of marketing in building company branding.

Bill Warren: The old days of establishing success based on tick-marks on a white board or even on gut feeling are gone. There are numerous resources that make up the recruiting process, and the right human-capital management system will allow you to measure both your internal and external resources. The ability to report metrics on the number of hires you make from various media, along with how efficient your recruiters are, will allow you to make better use of your resources.

Thomas J. Ferrara: The return-on-investment evaluation should be flexible. HR managers should seek the following benefits to help gauge results:

* Efficiency and effectiveness

* Time saved to identify, recruit, and manage candidate flow

* Screening: selectively reducing the crops before you bring them to the warehouse

* Branding: leveraging your recruitment products to further market your company as an ideal place to work

* The Internet has radically changed the way in which employers attract viable candidates. What should HR keep in mind as it utilizes this exciting medium?

Bernard Hodes: The important thing to keep in mind is that the Internet is a tool, and while it's a tool that good recruiters should have in their toolboxes, it should complement and support traditional recruiting methods. A smart career site is important, but without a well-thought-out, integrated media plan coupled with compelling employer-branded communications driving potential candidates to the site, its value will go unrealized.

Jeff Yehle: The Internet is an important tool and has greatly expanded the applicant pool. However, the Internet has also made the employment picture more competitive. All recruiters now have access to the same resume databases. This intensifies the competition for those candidates. The true lesson HR needs to learn about the Internet is that although recruiters now have access to millions of resumes the candidates in turn have access to thousands of opportunities--which is why the Internet truly empowers the employee, not the employer.

Don Ramer: The key is finding the right combination of national sites, career hubs, and local services to post and search. For example, many companies put all their online recruiting eggs into IT job-site baskets, and leave their accounting and finance openings to the local classifieds. However, you'd have a greater chance of finding qualified candidates on finance sites, because fewer of your competitors are using the finance career sites available to them.

Bill Warren: What companies need now is a solution that will provide recruiters and hiring managers with Internet-based desktop tools that allow corporate-wide and inter-organizational collaboration, process automation, and data mining and analysis. This includes moving Internet recruiting from its current "media" model, into a "career" network model, which provides a complete solution for attracting, recruiting, and hiring candidates; automating, managing, and monitoring the process; and also providing a link to external service providers.