Issue #7 — March 2009

In This Issue:

• Six Things to Do Now to Prepare for the Economic Recovery
• Recruiting in a Down Economy at Knight Transportation
• The Power of Connection: Social Media's Effect on Recruiting
• Executive Commentary: Best Practices for Recruiting in a Down Economy

Six Things to Do Now to Prepare for the Economic Recovery

1. Put a plan in place now to overhaul your sourcing. It's unlikely that the best person out there is going to stumble upon your ad unless you push it to that person. More likely, she'll call someone she knows first, maybe one of your current employees, or learn about it through a tweet, a post on a blog, or an IM with one of your recruiters on some site now being developed.
2. Prepare candidate personas for your critical positions. This should be the first step in every sourcing plan. Candidate personas describe your ideal candidate from multiple perspectives including the standard stuff like typical background, most likely prior employers, job titles, academics, schools attended, and group memberships.

Also included in this should be likely first- and second-degree connections, awards won, alternate job titles, indirect competitors, patents or papers written, blogs read, and topics/interests the person might search on.

3. Identify your best sourcing channels. If you're targeting the top one-third to the top 5%, your best channels will not be a major job board. More likely, it will be a proactive employee referral program powered by LinkedIn, search-engine-optimized talent hubs with push technology, a pipelining program with an automated CRM engine, and deeply networked recruiters who are subject matter experts.
4. Develop search-engine equity. It takes months to get to the top of any organic search listing, even if you do everything right. However, a well-designed talent hub (a micro site for job classes to attract prospects) with the right key words, URL, content, and in-bound links will eventually produce big-time results attracting candidates who Google for jobs.

In the interim, establish a pay-per-click model testing out the best keywords. This will yield good results right away at a reasonable cost, and pretty soon you'll be at the top of the organic search results for "jobs."

5. Start writing creative non-ads. If you want to still use job boards, make sure your postings stand out. Stop emphasizing skills and experiences; this is a turn-off to the best people. Tell stories instead.
   
   There are three things required to be in the game here:
   
   
   • First, the title has to be different. For example, something like "Un-Cost Manager Guru" will at least get someone to read the second teaser line.
   • On most job searches, these second line mini-descriptions are all but useless, but if you said something like this for an un-cost position you actually might get someone to click through: "This is a job for those rare business-oriented accounting folks who speak product marketing."
   • Then for the third point, make sure the copy describes the primary reason a person will be jazzed about doing this work at your company. Most people want to improve themselves somehow, so for the cost spot, something like "Our cost manager plays a critical role in every product launch decision we make," will increase the likelihood the person will actually apply.
6. Use social media the right way. My recruiting mantra is "don't sell the job, sell the next step." Too many recruiters rush to the close which turns off some of the best people who are willing to share info, but not consider a marketing job in Topeka. During this sharing process, you'll develop a personal relationship, and if a significant career opportunity arises, people will be more open to seriously evaluate it.

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Recruiting in a Down Economy at Knight Transportation

This current economic downturn has definitely changed the recruiting environment at Knight Transportation, and as a result, we have had to make some creative changes to our recruiting approach.

For example, we used to post on many job boards whenever we had an opening, but now, we receive hundreds of resumes even before posting the position. The vast majority of these candidates are not qualified, so it takes our recruiting team a long time to sift through them all to find the "diamonds in the rough."

As a result of this, we have adopted several new recruiting strategies. The following examples are recruiting approaches that have helped us improve our results, even in times like these.

1. Write blog posts. In the past few months, I have increased the amount of blog posts I write, and I have changed their focus a bit, too. I write on larger recruiting topics, but I don’t tie them directly to Knight Transportation. For example, I’ve recently written posts such as “How to Customize Your Resume” and "Relaxing Before An Interview."

Topics like this tend to attract more readers because they appeal to job-seekers, which in turn helps promote Knight Transportation. It’s extremely cost-effective and begins to build trust with potential candidates. It can even help them begin to understand our culture and what it’s like to work at Knight Transportation.

2. Career sites. I also take a look at a lot of different career sites out there to get a better understanding of what people are looking for, and how to attract them. For example, the Brazen Careerist is a site that appeals to a younger generation of workers, which has been helpful for companies recruiting Gen Y employees.
3. Successful employee profile. We've found that it is very important to know exactly what type of person your organization needs as well as the specific skills, attributes, and competencies they’ll need to be successful. At Knight Transportation we have gone through this exercise and created our “Knight Winner” profile, a list of attributes we think we should look for in candidates. By articulating this and making it available, our recruiters and hiring managers have had more success finding the right person for our organization.
4. Reach the target audience in new ways: Knight Transportation has many entry-level positions, which we used to staff by going to college job fairs. However, we're finding that these career fairs are just not targeted enough and tend to be more expensive than other sources.

Using new methods to build relationships with students in colleges and universities has helped us reach out to potential candidates. One approach that has been successful is having our hiring managers and recruiters volunteer to do presentations in classes or to targeted student organizations.

While the content is not a recruiting pitch, speaking allows us to introduce Knight Transportation to the same audience we used to find at college fairs. It also helps increase brand awareness, gives students a sense of who we are and what we do, and really helps us develop a pipeline of future job candidates.

At Knight Transportation, we're finding that new approaches – like these examples – are helping us overcome the recruiting challenges this tough economy poses.

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The Power of Connection: Social Media's Effect on Recruiting

In the latest release of Authoria Recruiting, we added the ability for employees to share company jobs on their Facebook or LinkedIn accounts. Getting employees to promote jobs for you can be a powerful and cost-effective solution – especially in times like these.

This focus on social media tools started me thinking about other ways to fill open positions and enhance an employee's overall experience through social networking. In the not-so-distant past, if I left a company, I was lucky if I stayed in touch with one or two people. Today, if my company has an architect position to fill, I know exactly how to find that brilliant architect I knew from a long time ago. And if I don't know anyone directly, I can throw the question out to my network to find a candidate that they know and trust.

Recruiters use these tools and connections in many different ways, but one of the most obvious advantages is the ability to search through large pools of people, or to share available jobs. Beside increasing the total volume of possible candidates, your total knowledge of each person will also increase – a significant improvement over just having a name and phone number in your rolodex.

You will undoubtedly wade through some information you just didn't want to know, but a lot of it will provide you with relationship starting points. Just be prepared to ignore anything that is obviously intended to be for social purposes only.

Companies are still trying to figure out the best ways to use social networks with their employees. As companies gain more remote employees, these networks can make everyone feel more connected to the organizations. Employers will most likely find it easier to use existing networking tools – Yammer, LinkedIn, Ning, or Facebook company groups – instead of trying to create in-house networking functionality.

My recommendation is to start a network by focusing on new hires. By default, new hires want to be engaged and be part of the organization. They also have a lot of questions, so you should invite the people with the answers, too. As that group becomes more entrenched in the organization, they will invite other longer-tenured employees into the fray.

As they do, the network will become the place to get answers, to be recognized for providing answers, and a knowledge portal for all employees. You can have a strong and active employee base – all engaged in your network and focused on helping the company succeed.

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Executive Commentary: Best Practices for Recruiting in a Down Economy

The current economic environment certainly creates new staffing challenges, but also new opportunities. Forward-thinking recruiting professionals can use the current sluggish economy as a time to improve:

• the overall quality of hires, infusing greater talent into the organization
• the company's "employer brand"
• the hiring process and staffing for the future

First and foremost, companies are hiring; albeit, the quantity of job openings is reduced and the open positions that do exist, are most frequently, the toughest to fill. Recruiting organizations are doing more with less at a time when there is a greater volume of less qualified candidates. The following strategies will help distinguish your recruiting effort and differentiate your company from the competitors.

• Communicate. With every candidate and as frequently as possible. Communication is the first piece of the hiring process that fails when work loads increase. Build communication templates and advance or disposition candidates throughout the process. In this job market, candidates are likely to accept the first offer, regardless of the role, and a lack of timely communication may result in lost candidates. In addition, candidates that receive feedback during the hiring process (good or bad) are much more likely to recommend or refer other candidates.
• Keep an accurate inventory of openings. Maintain up-to-date job requisitions and job postings. This will greatly reduce recruitment cycle-time on closed or outdated requisitions. Meet with hiring management continuously to review position status, changes and priorities. Ensure that external job postings are updated; candidates will disengage if they believe that these postings are out-of-date or are not accurate.
• Know your jobs, company and industry. Great recruiters know the position, how it fits within the organization, the strategy of the company and how it differentiates itself from the competitors. In this market, quality candidates are less likely to change unless they are confident of the direction of the role and the company, even more so for higher level roles, management and executive positions. Just as important is the need to identify and evaluate quality candidates. The quality of the hiring process is more important in a down economy than in times of growth. Greater efficiency begins with greater talent; the identification and evaluation of such talent begins with the recruitment organization.
• Work the referral program. During this time, referral volumes will increase; however, don't just let the referrals come to you, reach out and solicit referrals. Screen and interview these candidates first. Don't let referrals get swept into the growing candidate pile, referrals tend to be the best quality hires and should be the one of the first candidates reviewed during the hiring process. Communicate frequently. Based on their connection with the company, referral candidates are also likely to refer other high quality candidates, sometimes for the same role.
• Focus on local talent. Relocations are more complicated and in this housing market, extremely difficult. I wouldn't recommend passing up a great candidate, but concentrate your search efforts on the best chance to fill the position.

Building a better employer brand starts with improving the overall hiring process. The goal is to establish a recruiting system that is efficient and productive in bad economic times as well as good ones, and continues to improve the competencies of the recruiting staff and its processes.

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