RECRUITMENT IN NEW AGE: THE BEST PRACTICES OF THE BEST IN BUSINESS

RECRUITMENT IN NEW AGE: THE BEST PRACTICES OF THE BEST IN BUSINESS

Recruiting Leader of the Year, Best Use of Metrics, and Best Recruiting Process: Dan Hilbert, Valero Energy

What Dan Hilbert and his team at Valero Energy have accomplished will forever change the strategic options that recruiting directors must consider. They have developed what may be the world's most strategic staffing approach, one that emphasizes using metrics to refine "talent pipelines" to produce a talent supply chain.

Leveraging technology, advanced analytics, and process design/integration, Valero has built a talent supply chain that is virtually automated and proactive. It is clearly the most business-like recruiting approach anywhere and Hilbert is a courageous leader to even attempt it.

Best practices:

. Predictive labor needs system. Algorithms analyze historical data that is combined with data on planned capital projects to predict future talent needs as far as three years' out.

. Automated sourcing. Labor needs are automatically communicated to defined sources (both internal and external) based on each individual source's efficiency (cost, time) and effectiveness (quality of hire, reliability).

. Candidate mining. Rather than have recruiters crawling through job boards and posting job advertisements, web spiders are programmed to crawl, retrieve, and upload candidates into the applicant tracking system based on both current and projected needs. Advertisements are automatically broadcast as part of the automated sourcing approach.

. Multi-dimensional performance monitoring. The system relies on metrics at four defined levels to monitor system health and performance, as well as to diagnose problems or issues that arise. Levels include forecasts, macro-level (sourcing channel effectiveness, costs, etc.), micro-level (efficiency, cost, speed, quality, retention, customer service, and dependability per transaction), and human capital metrics (impacts of staffing best practices on the bottom line).

. Integrated processes to create a talent supply chain.

. Predictive modeling functionality enables the effective use of both short/long term sources.

. University recruiting that leverages teaching assistants as talent scouts on targeted campuses, allowing Valero to secure interns and new grads prior to on-campus career events.

More details on Valero's approach can be found in the five-part case study published via this column in 2005.

Most Innovative Employee Referral Program: Quicken Loans

Quicken Loans might just have the best and most aggressive recruiting team in the world (honest).

Michael Homula, clearly the most sales- and marketing-focused recruiter on the planet, has helped Quicken Loans to create an employee referral program that turns every employee into a "talent scout." If recruiting has a Tiger Woods, he would be it! The referral program relies on frequent refreshing, creative approaches, and extensive promotion to drive high-volume participation.

The program is so effective that 61 percent of hires come from the ERP each month.

Best practices:

. All referrals are contacted by a live program coordinator within 48 hours of submission.

. Referring team members are kept in the loop through a web portal that allows them to track the status of referrals online and by emails that update them when:

- The referral has been initially contacted.
- An interview is scheduled.
- A post-interview decision has been reached. To move forward, the system advises recruiters and managers of the next steps.
- A hire is actually completed.

. Utilizes highly branded contests (example — a contest for finding the best salesperson in the Detroit area), in addition to bonuses to drive participation. Such contests offer unique and highly valued prizes.

. Surveys are periodically conducted internally to measure:
- Employee satisfaction with the program.
- Ease of process.
- Referral "experience."
- Employee motivation and their willingness to refer.

. Focus groups are held periodically to generate new ideas for contests and promotions and to gather feedback on the current process.
. They provide training to employees on how to better make referrals.
. In addition to process metrics, Quicken Loans tracks retention by source, quality of hire, and cost per hire.
. Bonuses are grossed up to cover taxes.
. A proactive referral process approaches key individuals directly for high-quality referrals.
. Extensive e-mail marketing is delivered to the target employee population to:
- Educate them on current hiring needs.
- Drive referral for specific types of jobs.

Best Corporate Careers Website: Deloitte

Deloitte has long been a leader in both recruiting and retention, and now it has broken new ground by building a global careers website designed from the ground up to focus on the candidate experience. Unlike most corporate sites, which are dull and serve as nothing more than "front-ends" to applicant tracking systems, the Deloitte solution uses cutting-edge marketing approaches and the latest technology to serve candidates consistently around the world.

Quick facts:

. The site is a living example of "a global strategy executed locally."

. It leverages both localization and personalization engines to dynamically deliver content relevant to the site visitor.

. It is a single site supporting more than 80 country-specific recruiting strategies.

. Deloitte delivers a consistent brand message around the world in 10 languages.

Best practices:

. Target audience research. Deloitte conducted extensive usability research with two external candidate groups — students and experienced professionals — to help create the original design specifications. Ongoing surveys and focus groups with candidates sourced both inside and outside the organization help to guide refinements and changes. (This research led Deloitte not to follow a trend of using extensive flash and graphic-heavy page design, as their target candidates found such elements a barrier to usability.)

. Use of localization and customization. The use of these two technologies ensures that candidates are presented with information unique to their specific needs. College students in France, for example, are presented with different information than college students in Australia and both are presented with different information than professional hires. Extensive research is conducted to help determine what type of content each target demographic needs/wants.

. Employment brand measurement. The messaging of the site is adapted continuously based on input from candidate surveys and third-party market research which details how Deloitte is perceived in the talent market.

. Localized content management. Deloitte custom-built a content management tool to allow local HR professionals — who are not technical experts — to manage local content.

. Robust analytics. Because the global site is truly one site versus a portal that forwards users on to local sites, all movement throughout the more than 7,000 web pages can be monitored and analyzed.

. Multiple presentation formats. Because the site is powered by a robust content management tool, the same type of content can be delivered in multiple ways. For instance, a day "in the life" story maybe be presented as text, short video clip, or in-depth dynamic video.

. Web-based screening. Candidates who move from the site into the recruitment management application are screened using questionnaires tailored to each position.

. Introduces an online network for interns.

. The employee referral program offers a $30 reward just for the first referral, even if the person is not hired. Deloitte includes corporate alumni in the referral program.

Best Employer Brand: PacifiCare

. PacifiCare realizes the tremendous impact that a great brand can have on recruiting in a healthcare industry that has all but ignored employment branding.

. As a result, it has developed a formally managed employer brand that is fully integrated with the core business strategy and brand. The core business tagline is "Caring is good, doing something is better." This is supported by an employment brand tagline of "Envision, Innovate, and Accomplish."

Quick facts:

More than 85 percent of the candidates who received an in-person interview responded positively to the statement that PacifiCare was a "good place to work." This score is 26 percentage points higher than the norm.

When employees were ask to rate PacifiCare, as compared to other companies, 81 percent responded either "one of the best" or above average.

Best practices:

. Full-time HR representatives work in the branding department and they drive internal branding and employment brand integration.

. Full-time HR representatives in the talent acquisition department help to oversee all programs and messaging that affects the employment brand.

. They negotiated a partnership between the brand team, the advertising team and the talent acquisition team.

. They use external market research to gauge target candidates' perceptions in the marketplace in order to drive adjustments in program design and messaging.

. Executives do not rely on the hard sell; they communicate honestly, disclosing that PacifiCare is sometimes "not an easy place to work."

. The branding team participates in programs that demonstrate the brand by demonstrating results. A prime example of this approach is PacifiCare's development of the first-ever Quality Index of Hospitals.

Best College Recruiting Program: Whirlpool

Whirlpool has redesigned its university recruiting program to ensure a consistent pipeline of mid-level management talent through the Whirlpool Leadership Development Program.

Quick facts:

Global rotation programs are developed along functional lines to ensure skill development according to the functions' pre-defined performance criteria. More than seven separate programs exist, covering everything from brand portfolio leadership to global supply chain management.

Each leadership-program participant receives frequent feedback, a senior-level mentor, a tiered compensation package and a defined career path.

Best practices:

. Identified employment brand obstacles that would prevent them from hiring the volume and quality of top graduates that they needed. They then developed a strategy to "call out" negative perceptions, such as those of the appliance industry itself.

. Leveraged the brand identity of Ben Stein, a known and trusted celebrity, to reach out directly to the target audience by including him in all recruitment communications.

. Designed highly visible recruiting events at target schools that leverage partnerships with local organizations, entertainment venues and elsewhere.

. Developed a web-based portal specific to campus recruitment that focuses on the candidate experience versus administrative functionality.

. Highly selective leadership development mentor program. Managers selected to participate as mentors must go through a rigorous selection process and are then monitored closely to ensure that only managers who consistently produce results remain in the program.

Most Strategic Use of Recruiting Technology: Hewlett-Packard

. Hewlett-Packard has been a pioneer in the adoption of a truly global HR strategy and in using technology in order to transform HR for more than 20 years. In its latest move, HP has integrated all recruitment technologies via the @HP portal to support a global HR self-service model.

. The recruitment elements are just one component of the Global Human Resource Management System, which supports 147,000 employees in 178 countries. It provides content in 11 languages and provides self-service for 36 manager and employee transactions and nine additional standard HR transactions.

Quick facts:

. Global staffing practices and technologies were streamlined to support a global strategy and consistent staffing methodology worldwide.

. The approach does provide some degree of flexibility to support variations in staffing approaches and perspectives across geographic regions (Americas, Asia Pacific and Japan, and EMEA).

Best practices:

. Staffing methodology across all four regions is supported by a global workforce planning and staffing leadership team.
Specific technology plans exist to drive the use of technology in:
- Experienced candidate recruitment
- University recruitment
- Intern recruitment
- Diversity recruitment

IT firms hike referral bonuses

IT firms hike referral bonuses

Though recession goes on worsening, some U.S. firms in India are on a hiring mode for outsourcing jobs and they are increasingly hiking referral bonuses for existing employees. Referral bonuses are supposed to be given to employees who refer talented people to the company. U.S. Firms like Deloitte, ADP, Pegasystems and Broadridge in India have hiked the referral bonuses already, reported The Economic Times.

Deloitte, which employs over 6,000 people in India, has doubled its referral bonus to employees last week. The employees will now get Rs. 10,000-50,000 for every person who they refer, depending on the level at which they will be joining the firm. The company has also increased its campus hiring by 20-30 percent this year.

An industry analyst said, "This is the right time to hire as salary expectations of people have become realistic and referral system helps identify suitable people. Besides, expansion of India operations will help the firm cut cost significantly and mitigate the risk of the U.S. slowdown."

"Most firms in the West are trimming down workforce there to cut cost. This is expected to bring more offshore work to India. This could lead to an increased demand for people especially the high-end talent pool," said, Prashant Srivastava, HR expert & managing partner (India), The Gallup Organization.

He also mentioned that firms are under pressure to scale up faster and the referral system provides a cost-effective way to get people with right-skill and attitude. Compared to the recruitment process through executive search firms referral will be at least 10-15 percent cheaper.

Pegasystems, a U.S. based business process management (BPM) software provider is looking to hire 60-80 high-end talent-pool for its R&D center in Hyderabad in six months. "Our referral bonus ranges from Rs 25,000-75,000 per person. As we want to scale up our operations at a faster pace, we have increased this bonus by Rs 50,000 for referring a person at certain positions like tech lead. Hence, if a candidate is selected, an existing employee can earn up to Rs 1.25 lakh, which will be beyond his salary. We will give this extra benefit for the next six months," said Suman Reddy Eadunuri, MD, Pegasystems Worldwide India.

Similarly, ADP, the $9 billion business outsourcing solutions firm, is looking at recruiting 400 people in the next six months at its Hyderabad and Pune centers. This year (June-December), the company added 400 people. Of this, about 52 percent were selected through referral process as against 45 percent last fiscal.

Ref: http://www.siliconindia.com/shownews/49984

Employee Referral Schemes

Employee referral scheme pertaining to recruitment depends upon the nature of industry. Some of the industries which are more man power intensive always fall short of man power. Under these circumstances HR department always remain under pressure for recruitment and retainment of employees. Employees referral scheme plays a big role in this context. It has both positive and negative impacts on the organisation. Negative impacts can never be eliminated but yes these can be minimised for further consolidation of scheme. Some points need to be taken care of, while preparing the employee refrral program:-

1. Policy should be meant for a particular category of employees. This will help in maintaining the professionalism in the company.

2. Employees must be made aware of the parameters expected by the company from new recruit.

3. Monetary benefits can be shared with the employee whose recommendations helped organisation to finalise management in selecting the candidate.

4. These monetary benefits can be shared in number of stages e.g 15% of cost of hiring may be paid to concerned employee on joining of new employee. Another 25 % after completion of one month of service by new joined and balance after the completion of three months of service or after confirmation of employee in to services of company.

5. The reasons behind the above is that the recommending employee will help the new joined in apprising the culture of organisation thus reducing the settle down time.

6. Back ground of the new selection can be verified from the present employee.

7. The recommended employee should have minimum two years of service in the organisation.

8. Employees who have been issued warning letter or chargesheeted in the past should be barred from entering the scheme.

9. Not more than two recommendations should be accepted through one employee during a year. This number may depend upon requirement and present strength of organisation.

10. Negative impacts like unionism may enter into the organisation. Unity among the known are more as compared to independent. Psychometric impacts on known cases are more effective and may result in frustration and demoralisation.