Elaine will be speaking on Candidate Experience at the 6th Annual National HR in Hospitality Conference which is right around the corner!

They are offering an additional $200.00 off the already discounted Early Bird rate — for $450.00 in total savings. You can attend the full conference for only $945.

Remember, this speaker discount expires in just a few weeks — on Feb. 13 — so please don’t put this at the bottom of your to-do list. Let your colleagues and clients know about this great discount by sending the email today.

Read the full article here.

Read full article here.

Metrics can be powerful when coupled with the right imagination and vision. Billy Beane’s story, Moneyball, teaches us that when there is too much information – no sport has more data than baseball – it is time to rethink what and how we measure success. Success in baseball is winning; success in sourcing and recruiting is hiring. And like the journey to winning in baseball, the path to hiring as viewed through the eyes of data will help us determine what activities lead to success.

Adapt or Die is the motivation that will lead us there. In order to make our metrics and new understanding of recruiting and sourcing work, we need to pay attention to what our target audience, i.e. candidates, want and work with them in the communities in which they participate. At the end of the day, we need to take the info to which we’re privy and have the courage to move forward on it.

In baseball, John W. Henry serves as a perfect example. The futures and foreign exchange trading advisor and former owner of the Florida Marlins went on later in his career to purchase the Boston Red Sox. As owner, Henry hired baseball writer, historian, statistician and developer of sabermetrics, Bill James with the goal of ending the Curse of the Bambino. Henry’s payoff came two years later, when the Red Sox swept the St. Louis Cardinals to win the 2004 World Series after beating the Yankees in the greatest postseason collapse in baseball history. Henry, James and the Red Sox turned the metrics and their theories into a reality, by having the courage move forward with their data and vision.

When performance is structured, benchmarked and measured, you should be confident to make decisions based on that data, even if it challenges those things you already “know” about recruiting. It seems like a simple, logical step, but it’s often the most difficult to adopt.

Thanks for joining us for this special guest blog series. Moneyball Sourcing Lessons 1, 2 and 3 are currently available on the Talent Function Group blog. If you’d like to learn more, you can view Marvin’s recent webinar on Moneyball Sourcing on ERE.net and join the Talent Community Development Group on LinkedIn.

HR.com’s Institute for Human Resources (IHR) is overwhelmed with parental pride to have one of its first born children, the Contract Workforce and Talent Exchange online HR certification program, celebrate its first birthday. Since its first baby steps with virtual courses starting in December 2010, the Institute has had over 92,000 total registrations across all programs in more than 900 webcasts in 22 different programs areas including Contract Workforce and Talent Exchange.

Read full press release here.

According to BtoB magazine, only 10 percent of website visitors or searchers are ready to engage, make a purchase decision or opt-in right away; but over the course of the subsequent 12 months, with the right value-added communication, that number skyrockets to 87 percent. At Microsoft, we’ve experienced similar results, which is why Moneyball Sourcing Lesson 3 reiterates the importance and benefits of candidate relationship management (CRM).

Moneyball Sourcing Lessons 1 and 2 have shared how powerful metrics can be when coupled with the right imagination and vision. But the Oakland A’s and Billy Bean’s story should ultimately guide you toward building a strategic candidate farming system that focuses on building relationships with candidates.

In the now evolving, traditional recruiting scenario, recruiters face a mixed talent pool of those who might be right for open positions – or future openings – but aren’t quite ready to commit to a company. In an ideal state, recruiters should regularly communicate with these candidates to keep them interested. But, even with the breadth of tools available to us, this may be more challenging than it seems at first glance.

Unfortunately for recruiters, our audience is restless and expects updates regularly, sometimes daily. What’s more, a traditional social contract is now broken. Professionals are no longer loyal to employers; they’re loyal to their professions. So, when leveraging CRM tools, be sure your messages are clear, consistent and genuinely reflect your company’s employment brand. Tell your restless audience what makes your organization different and memorable – they’ll want to know what’s in it for them.

Consider these communications an opportunity to invite candidates to participate in the company’s online social communities. Rather than rely on the content of one database – your applicant tracking system, for example – engage a community of communities that includes social media networks, such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Google+. Participate in discussions, using all networks to engage members and make them feel connected to your company. Don’t be afraid to use what you learn within those communities to better understand the talent and resources that are currently available.

Stay tuned for the fourth and final installment of this guest blogger series, “Moneyball Sourcing Lesson 4: Having the Courage to Believe the Data.” And remember, bringing candidates in for the run is a multi-touch process. With each interaction, they’re one base closer to applying, and you’ll be one step closer to finding the perfect hire.

We’ve learned our first Moneyball lesson: conventional wisdom isn’t always relevant wisdom. Now that you’ve deconstructed what you thought you knew about effective sourcing methods and understand why candidate relationship management isn’t going anywhere, it’s time to understand how you can ditch a “gut feeling” approach to making HR decisions and swap it for a data driven one.

In baseball, general managers rely on sabermetrics to help them understand the capabilities and performance of the league’s players. In Moneyball, Billy Beane and Paul DePodesta, then both of the Oakland A’s, used that data in new ways, helping them build a high-performance winning team of players who were previously undervalued. Recognizing that scoring is a process, and that games are not won with home runs alone, Beane and DePodesta assessed players’ on-base percentage (OBP) as a key to victory. Getting on base creates the conditions for the next step in the process.

When it comes to recruiting we can take a similar approach with our data using dashboards as provided by recruiting solutions including Jobs2web and TalentBrew. Remember it’s about nurturing relationships with your candidates, and applying for a job is not a one-time transaction. Much like scoring, getting candidates to apply is a process, and we can determine how many visitors we need to get the right hire. Consider the process a series of multi-touch, trust-building stops around the candidate relationship diamond:

• First base might be when a candidate signs up for your company’s email list, an RSS blog feed or your talent community.
• When the candidate begins following your company on Twitter, likes you on Facebook, or subscribes to your LinkedIn groups, they may be reaching second base.
• The candidate could be rounding third as they download your company’s whitepapers or sign up for a webinar.
• Candidates are likely to cross home plate and apply for a position as a result of having made several smaller moves toward understanding your company and its initiatives.

Jobs2web talent community data shows that 57 percent of candidates who apply for a position do so on the first day it’s posted, but it’s important to remember that the other 43 percent do come back – after they’ve rounded the bases – and apply afterwards. Whether they are passive candidates, or needed to learn more about your company to commit to an application, your perfect hire might be a member of that 43 percent. As mentioned during Lesson 1, the days of post and pray are over. Wave your candidates on home with a solid CRM strategy.

Next at bat, with details on building a strategic “farm system” and talent lifecycle database, will be “Moneyball Sourcing Lesson 3: Adapt or Die.”

By now, most of us know that Moneyball offers much insight for employers on the value of analytics when recruiting. The best-selling book, and now popular film, details Billy Beane’s successful attempt at building a baseball club on a budget, and shares how the Oakland A’s general manager employed computer-generated data analysis to draft a winning team. But before employers can begin to transform their practices and reap the benefits of sabermetrics for HR, they’ll need to match their beliefs with current recruiting realities. This re-education essentially asks employers to challenge conventional recruiting wisdom so they can more effectively attract, identify and retain the right talent. Begin with the following curveballs:

Jobs boards are striking out. According to 2010-2011 results for key Jobs2web clients who provided ATS applicant status data, job boards are the FOURTH most effective source of hires, following sources such as Facebook, company career sites, and industry groups. As qualified candidates flock to more specialized, specific and social sources, employers are reacting. Earlier this year 24 percent of companies said they planned to decrease their usage of third-party employment websites and job boards over 2011.

Bat a thousand using candidate relationship management. According to Recruiting Roundtable survey, “Building Talent Pipelines,” passive candidates perform slightly better than active candidates. While this by no means implies that you should give up marketing to those who are actively searching for positions, it does mean businesses need to focus their efforts on candidate relationship management to attract and nurture those who might be the best fit for your company’s open positions.

Post and pray has lost its way. It’s true; the days of post and pray are over. And with the abundance of cutting-edge technologies available to recruiters today, they should be. From social media networking tools that help tap your own networks to social-minded solutions that target candidates where they network, recruiters can economically and effectively tap a wealth or qualified talent, and better yet, understand what’s working.

Keep a watch for “Moneyball Sourcing Lesson 2: The Science of Wisdom,” where we’ll discuss the next step in tossing your gut feelings based recruiting practice for one that’s data-driven.

We arrived in Delhi, India early Thursday morning. It has been almost 5 years to the day since my last trip to India with a client. Both trips similar in nature (global recruiting process alignment and recruiting technology implementation) the location are different and the clients different.

The journey from the airport to the hotel was a strong reminder of past trips to this country and the remarkable difference from anywhere else I’ve ever been. Arriving at the hotel, we were greeted like royalty. The Oberoi Hotel was designed for the experience and specifically with extreme customer care as the baseline. As you are greeted at the door, the reception staff has a folder with your arrival information and you are immediately escorted to your room. They were careful to point out all of the facilities (exercise room, spa, restaurant for dining, etc.) They asked targeted questions; where are you traveling from, how long will you stay, do you have any special needs, preferences, likes/dislikes. They spent time educating you on the features in your suite, including the power, blinds, and what I have come to want everywhere I go – the Butler Button. One push of that button and someone is at your door in less than a minute, ready to serve you and respond to any request. The power of instant human customer service was tempting – just because it is something that is so foreign in contrast to our self-service lifestyle in the U.S. Every evening was greeted with the turndown service, which included fresh fruit, special amenities, and extra attention to the things that we found important (i.e. magazines, newspapers, hotel gifts.) After the third day, it was no longer strange to be greeted by formal name by multiple hotel staff throughout the day, without the conscious ability to remember each and every representative. The highest level of service, preference profiling and genuine passion to exceed your expectations I’ve ever witnessed.

With one day off before traveling to Dubai, we booked a driver and a car to take us to Agra – the city that hosts the Taj Mahal. The maps suggest that the drive is just under 3 hours, but knowing the complexities of India traffic, we expected it to be longer – and it was. We set out at 2:30 in the morning to arrive at the Taj Mahal in time for sunrise. We were there close to our expected time. The drive to Agra was mostly in the dark. The arrival to the common area by the Taj was early dawn and cloudy. The cultural differences were masked by the morning fog. Touring the Taj Mahal is a blog post in and of itself. It holds a very spiritual and emotional connection to everyone that visits it and as one of the ‘new’ 7 Wonders of the World. It was worth the trip there and the trip back.

Our travels back to Gurgoan and our 5-star hotel waiting to cater to our every need were at the other extreme. While having been to India before, I am still never fully prepared to handle the extreme lifestyle differences. A four hour journey back to the hotel was met with the afternoon lifestyle of a Saturday at the market – every market, every town. The roads are crowded with any and all forms of transportation – camels, tractors, motorcycles, trucks, cars, oxen, carts, horses… all sharing the same two lanes as if they were 5, all acknowledging each other with horns, bells, shouts. The concept of traffic in the U.S. has no traction in this atmosphere. The streets were crowded with makeshift carts, and stands, selling their produce, goods and trades. Hundreds of people lined the streets; all engaged in what was a typical Saturday afternoon. It was common to drive pass men getting a ‘shave and a haircut’ in a chair along the side of the road and kids sharing a bucket of water while they bathed. Dogs, monkeys and other livestock roam the streets at their leisure. The World Bank estimates that 80% of India’s population lives on less than $2 a day. This was made very clear to us as we made our way through the countryside back to our hotel.

My impression of India and our visit there is the summation of a ‘constant state of extremes.’ It is the first place where I experienced the extreme difference in the care, service, and attention of a world class hotel, with the reality of the social, economic, financial effects right outside the main gates.

While this post doesn’t have a direct association to staffing and recruiting, I can’t help remembering the purpose for this trip is exactly that – staffing and recruiting efforts. My client is committed to developing talent in India, and recruitment and growth are why we are there. To expand the recruiting efforts and implement the technology and processes that will improve the recruiting results, even in a constant state of extremes.

View many of photos that I’ve taken while in India here.