A few weeks ago,  I had the opportunity to participate in the Thought Leadership Institute’s event at the Borgata Hotel in Atlantic City.   I can’t remember attending an event where I remember learning more.   Here is a download of the highlights of what I learned.   Warning, this will be a bit miscellaneous, but so is my brain.

The Bat-Phone.  I met real veteran of high level executive recruiting.   When I talked to him I felt like I was talking to someone in “black ops recruiting.”    One technique that is used these days for executive recruiting is to send the prospective target / candidate an i-Phone loaded up with a bunch of hand picked applications.   The “targets” and their kids love it.    More importantly, it provides a secure line between the recruiter and the candidate that the candidate is SURE to answer.

Freezing the Market. One leading staffing head was asked, “Do you use headhunters?”   His response was a different sounding “yes.”  He said company engages the top headhunters to neutralize them so that they don’t recruit their best people.   Now this is a company that treats talent as a source of competitive advantage.   Things are indeed not always as they seem.

Negative Design. One staffing head uses this practice to build a top rate candidate experience.   When he visits a countries recruiting staff, he poses the question, “What can we do to guarantee that a candidate will never return our call after an interview?”    Then the HR / Recruiter staff proceeds to list all the details that would offend a candidate:

a. We would have them stay at these forgettable hotels

b. We would take them to ugly route from the hotel to the office

c. We would leave them in the lobby too long

d. Our interviewers would be late and un-prepared

e. We wouldn’t……

The staff then designs the recruiting process so that none of the negative things are part of the recruiting process.   He spoke of controlling the experience.   If there is such a thing as brilliant common sense, then this is it.

Aspirational Hiring.   “Who is the best brand manager in Moscow?   I don’t care what industry he/she is from – Let’s go get’em!   Get an i-Phone in the mail.”  This company does this for ALL positions.   I finally met someone that is actually more extreme then all of the Talent Management Theory.

“We Recruit the Family.”    This is what a particular staffing head said nine times during his presentation.   His team tunes into the family’s social media signal (i.e. the kids) and they keep focused on making the family happy.   If the family isn’t happy, it will not work.   I thought I was listening to an SEC football coach.

“Kevin-Bacon-afication.” The six degrees of Kevin Bacon is a game that most people have heard of.   In preparing for my talk, I actually decided to see if I was connected to Kevin Bacon.   Shockingly, I am now 2 degrees from the real Kevin Bacon.   This is hilarious and it also highlights the looming reality that we will all be able to identify everyone at a point in the near future.   What does that mean going forward for the role of the recruiter?

“Recruitville.” I had a blast floating a challenge to the participants to design a Farmville like recruiting game.   The group came up with some very useful and interesting LEVELS of recruiting mastery.   Stay tuned from a deeper piece on this one.

Linking Recruiting to Performance.   One recruiting organization links recruiter performance to the performance rating of their placements for three years.   Again, I have finally met someone that goes beyond the theory.

Thanks to the TLI team for an inspiring and thought provoking event.

1. Leveraging social media in recruiting to improve the sourcing and identification of critical talent
2. Alignment of recruiting efforts to optimize who is doing which aspects of the recruiting work
3. Identification of technology to help solve the problem and enable the process.

As a promise to the audience, I offered I would publish a list of the vendors that I knew offered free to low -cost talent acquisition/recruiting technology solutions. Below is the fulfillment of my promise, and I hope that if you know of any additional vendors that should be shared, that you will comment to the blog post and we will add them.

Reminder: To those that attended the session I only ask that you remember the primary point of the webinar as you consider these and other vendors in the market. The focus that  ‘you reap what you sow’. Unless you have taken the steps to really define you’re recruiting goals, aligned them with your business goals and defined a process and system requirements that are measurable and sustainable, free or not – you still risk not achieving your goal with technology. Also as you consider different solutions be sure to factor in the total cost of ownership to configure, manage and maintain the solution within your organization. In some cases that effort might create a greater costing model then focusing on a vendor that provides all of those services as part of their solution model.

Disclaimer: This list is based on Talent Function Group research and should not be considered exhaustive or all inclusive. Transparency: At TFG we choose to implement SmartRecruiters offered by Mr Ted and have been impressed with the capabilities they have delivered over the year.

Events
Next week is a big week for us in events. Mark will be facilitating a working dinner session on Recruiting Technology at the Thought Leadership Institute Sourcing Summit in Atlantic City, NJ. The session will include some visioning exercises around how enablement should be delivered in recruiting products of the future. I will be attending the Kenexa Analyst Briefing to hear firsthand about their success in business growth, technology capabilities and meet some of the new leadership team.  They are a solution provider that continues to add value to the recruiting function.  On the heels of these two events, Mark and I will be attending SHRM in San Diego. We hope to see many of you there, and if you don’t have plans Monday night, consider joining us at the Padre’s game for our Talent Function sponsored networking event.

Workshops
I’m thrilled at the response and interest we are getting for our first recruiting focused coaching and leadership workshop, on July 13, 2010.

Mark McMillan and Carol Mahoney (former VP of Talent for Yahoo!) have designed an amazing agenda and content focused around enabling the recruiting team leaders and managers to be strong client relationship managers. The workshop will be very active and I know with Mark and Carol collaborating on it, it will be a huge success.

More Non-Hotel Conferences Please. Environments matter to the quality of thinking.   Sorry, but Marriott pastel carpeting with Costco blue table mints doesn’t inspire me to think.  It makes me feel like a cube dweller.  Walking the castle grounds leads to far more interesting conversations.   Thank you to Mark Ozawa and John Chaisson for manifesting this non-traditional venue.

Studying Small Companies Makes Sense. I confess that I tire of always thinking about big company issues.    Wisdoms seem more easily identified in smaller environments.  It is a more manageable petri dish for testing innovative approaches.  To my thinking, if it doesn’t work in small doses first, then it won’t work at scale. I was particularly inspired by a presentation by Mark Harrison of Abraham&Harrison (see my blog with the title “Virtual Admiration…”)

Intangible Innovation. Ed Bernacki, an Innvoation-alist, presented a model for innovation that was particularly energizing.  “Tangible” innovation refers to things like new products, logos, or a piece of art. Tangible innovation is what most of us load up when we hear that word innovative. And we often bestow the adjective “creative” to those who are engaged tangible innovation.  “Intangible” innovation refers to new ideas applied to process and operation.  They are harder to point to and we often don’t think to label them as creative innovations.  Human Resource professionals are often in the business of intangible innovation. I love this model because it recognizes that innovation and creativity happen in every realm.

Complexity is the New 30. There are more countries involved in your daily life.  There are more devices (aka…umbilical chords) in your daily life. There are more worker types.  There are more generations involved at work.   There are more places to work from.  There are more choices.  From a Darwinian perspective I guess that it means that we are all growing complexity tails.

More Berlin Please. If anyone in your presence starts a sentence with, “Would you like to go to Ber”…….Say YES at the “r”.

More information about the event here.

Elaine Orler presenting. More information click here.

Mark your calendar!  Check back for more information or click here.

Mark your calendar!  Check back for more information, or click here to learn more.

Click here for more info.