How to Approach Recruitment during Recession

A recession is a bad thing for the majority of businesses,
but recruitment doesn’t have to stop.

All businesses have cycles — periods when you're unbelievably busy, periods where you can take a bit more time to breathe. It stands to reason that your recruitment plans will closely follow these cycles.

When a recession hits, or when the busy periods become less and less frequent, your recruitment plans will undoubtedly be affected and it's important for all businesses to have plans in place to work through the period in as smooth a way as possible.

• Resist a blanket hiring freeze — Whilst this is often the first reaction of any business that sees difficult times ahead, why should all departments be affected? If your business could be saved by investing in technology, then it doesn't make sense not to allow that department to continue recruiting, especially if there is a lot of good talent in the market due to other companies making redundancies. If there is a surplus of top talent, it may actually make sense to over-hire.
• Review your suppliers — Whoever you use to assist in your recruitment efforts (creative agencies, staffing firms, advertisers, etc), you should look to assess how safe your agreement is with them. As well as ensuring any existing contracts can be fulfilled, you may need to put in contingency plans for alternative suppliers in case any of your current vendors go out of business.
• Revise recruiting targets — A different situation means a different focus for those involved in recruiting and it's important that those signing off budgets and checking progress are aware of this. Look at your cost per hire, time to hire and retention rates to determine how you can display that you are having positive results despite the general downturn in business.
• Focus priorities — Ensuring you put all your efforts into recruiting high-impact positions will allow you to squeeze the most out of your budget. Look at the various recruiting methods you use and work out which have returned the best results. Recessions aren't the time for experiments, unless they come at a relatively low cost.
• Prepare for more applications — A recession means more people are out of work, which means you will generally see a higher number of applications per vacancy. While this sounds like you will have a nice pool of candidates to choose from, that's only the case if you can physically manage to review all the applications that come in. Plan your job adverts in a way that will allow you to manage the response levels.
• Combine resources — If you work for a large business that generally manages hiring needs on a local level, it's wise to look at ways you can share both knowledge and resources. It may be the case that one location strugglingwhilst another is is thriving and in need of help with their recruitment campaigns.
• Show you're a secure option — If you're trying to attract new employees during a recession it's important that you show in your job adverts that if someone joins your business, they won't be made redundant before they finish their probation period. Mention your recent growth and future plans to show that you're a safe bet.

If your business is unwilling or unable to continue even a limited recruitment programme during a recession, there is still a lot you can do to ensure you're prepared for when things do get better.

One tactic is to look at how you can shift talent internally. If one department is struggling to justify retaining an employee whilst another is desperately overworked, look at how you can utilise their skills to even the balance. You will obviously need to discuss any possible changes in career paths with employees, but it's often possible to adjust roles and responsibilities if they're attractive enough (and almost anything is more attractive than the prospect of unemployment)..

Look at analysing the various circumstances that have occurred that have put your business in this situation. Are there any triggers that would warn you when bad times are on the way? What can be done to minimise the impact of a recession in the future?

Whatever you do, make sure you don't just give up!

A Great Idea That Will Never Happen

A Great Idea That Will Never Happen

It is too easy to become a recruiter. I suppose that can be said for a variety of disciplines, but I would wonder how closely those positions affect the bottom line the way recruiting does. A company is powered by its people and the gas of that engine is recruiting. Staffing professionals know this, C-level executives are aware of the fact and likewise savvy investors who bet on the jockey rather than the horse they ride on. However, across many organizations the staffing department is grudgingly regarded as a resource of necessity that is wholly unappreciated. To make an unfair comparison, recruiters are often thought of like Firemen; well appreciated in times of fire, but forgotten otherwise. Sure, there are organizations that give lip service to the value of recruiting, but consider these questions. How often does the CEO of your company wander the cubicles of the staffing department to personally congratulate their contribution? When was the last time the staffing department was given kudos in a press release from upper management? When the stock goes up in your company, is staffing cited as a factor?

Recruiting overall suffers from bad publicity (or the lack of a significant amount of good publicity) reflected in the unspoken accolades from above and the occasional disdain from candidates. What do I mean? If a candidate is unemployed, unhappily employed or under-employed, then a call from a recruiter is a welcome God-send. Conversely, if the candidate is comfortable in their present role, such solicitations can be a nuisance. Furthermore, consider those recruiters who engage unqualified candidates and handle their candidates haphazardly. The end result is a negative impression of a certain company and a black eye on recruiting in general. It would seem that when recruiting (in any discipline) you have to contend not only with the requirements you are trying to fill, but also the biases of recruiting coming from all concerned. Fortunately, I have a strategy for turning this around.

Simply put, serving as a recruiter does not carry the prestige of being a doctor or lawyer; neither high school nor college students decide early on to become a recruiter. (How many graduate programs offer an intensive training in recruiting?) It has been my observation that people tend to "stumble" into recruiting and therein lies the issue. Returning to my initial statement, it is too easy to become a recruiter. While it takes a lot of effort to be a good recruiter and great experience to be seen as superlative, only a nominal effort is required to become an "official" recruiter. This is why I propose that the recruiting industry submit itself to a national standard that is regulated by an outside agency. Specifically, I would like to see the following:

That a license be required before one can recruit for any entity and that said license can be revoked if the licensee fails to maintain a minimum of continuing education credits.

That a national code of ethics is established and that an ethics review board be created as well. Said review board would operate to investigate major complaints and discrepancies jobseekers and organizations have lodged against a particular recruiter (and not necessarily a certain company.)

That an agency be created for the purpose of reviewing the practices, complaints and feedback of recruiters; after which, a ratings point will be given. Recruiters would then have the right to display their customer rating (akin to how restaurants display their health code ratings) and include these ratings within their sales collateral.

That a standard for resumes be established to include no more than four different formats. In this way, each recruiter and/or the company they represent may announce the style they prefer to receive from applicants.

That a reporting standard be established enabling job seekers to research the status of their candidacy in real-time.

That each recruiting entity post on their website a link to the national code of ethics they adhere to and information on how to lodge a complaint and/or testimonial.

Is this too much to ask for? Maybe not; perhaps we as recruiters will one day demand a new level of excellence and take it upon ourselves to regulate ourselves. When the labor shortage hits and companies are scrambling to secure top talent, management will appreciate our efforts to adhere to new principles and see staffing in a new light. And then there is the ultimate triumph of people aspiring from highschool to join the recruiting industry. Realizing the influence, prestige and distinction that come with being a trained and licensed recruiter, the average career span of a recruiter would more than double.

Outsourcing to Insourcing

How can recruitment process outsourcing, or RPO, possibly have an impact on a trend called "insourcing"?

If there was ever a contradiction that works for talent management, this is it. Over the past several years, only about 15% of companies were using RPO solutions as part of their talent management strategy. More recently, economic uncertainty, even in key industries like the energy sector, has demanded the development of hiring solutions that combine the flexibility of temporary workers with the training and dedication of permanent staff.

To address this new workplace need, RPO and insourcing are the best pairing since peanut butter met chocolate. The marriage has created what some industry experts call "a poacher-turned-gamekeeper" approach to recruitment and retention. Instead of hiring, training, and on-boarding their own telephone sales force, for example, a company approaches an outside agency to do it for them.

The sales force is trained according to client specifications and works on the client's site as a cohesive team, but is paid, managed, and administrated by the RPO provider. The company can increase or decrease the size of its sales force according to its needs, current projects or campaigns, and output cycle. As the performance, size, and productivity of the team are perfected under the supervision of the RPO provider, the company can choose to "insource" the entire team and hire them as permanent employees at the close of the contract.

Look for insourcing and recruitment process outsourcing partnerships to prove, once and for all, that opposites attract in a growing number of companies.

The future of recruitment

RPO, the future of recruitment

MindTree Consulting won five of the seven awards at the annual Recruitment and Staffing Best in Class (RASBIC) Awards ceremony. MIndTree was recognised as the Best Recruiting and Staffing Organisation of the Year.

RPO is the complete ‘process’ outsourcing of recruitment. The RPO vendor is accountable for transforming the client’s processes and is responsible for all areas — tactical and strategic.

When the current recessionary period passes and the IT industry gets back to binge-hiring, it will be the ability to recruit large numbers, swiftly, consistently and in an inexpensive manner that will help the sector resume its high growth rate.

RPO Vs Non RPO Vendor

The difference is actually that between the sky and earth. A recruitment partner is usually one of many resume sources (contingency hiring organisations) and in some cases may also supply contract recruiters to the client. The recruitment partner usually works in conjunction with the client’s existing recruitment teams and other sourcing vendors. Most often, the planning, processing and almost all the strategic areas of recruitment are retained by the client-side recruiter team. In this model, accountability is not passed on fully to the recruitment partner and the commercial model followed will at best be a fixed retainer fee that may or may not have a variable bonus component.

RPO is the complete ‘process’ outsourcing of recruitment. This means that the RPO vendor holds complete accountability for transforming the client’s processes and is ultimately responsible for all areas — tactical and strategic. The commercial model is a full-risk switchover to outcomes/value-based pricing, a clear departure from the traditional no-risk retainer fee model.

When we defined RPO, we realised that it would be relevant to an organisation only if it links its payments to value created and/or outcomes achieved. The challenge was to quantify the value/outcomes in detail so both parties were satisfied that they were getting a fair deal. It is relatively easy to get here as we had begin measuring our recruitment effectiveness internally before we implemented the RPO model. We have identified eight critical-to-quality (CTQ) items that we will monitor in the RPO engagement, namely, the fulfillment index, source mix, no-shows, offer to joining conversion rate, turnaround time, screening to interview selects, cost per hire and effort per hire.

Since the RPO vendor takes responsibility for the entire recruitment team and its activities, the recruitment team’s direct (salary) costs are first transferred to them. Apart from this, there are at least six different cost items such as sign-on bonus, employee referral payouts, walk-in events, travel and logistics costs, etc, that are transferred to the RPO vendor.

Besides the cost-transfers, the RPO team structure ensures optimal usage of resources and there are incentives to increase productivity and minimise effort-loss. Since the RPO is accountable for the entire process, there is an incentive to continually innovate and realise process improvements rather than being content playing the paper-pushers.

The RPO vendor handles all hiring requisitions and passes them on to a preferred sourcing vendor. This ensures that there is a deep discount on the industry average of 8.33 per cent consultant payout on each joinee, ensuring that the cost per hire is significantly lower than before.

Candidate-job fit which is the ultimate deliverable is the most difficult to achieve as requisitions from our internal customers are not as clear and unambiguous as we want them to be.

RPO definitely enables JIT (Just In Time) hiring. Our average processing time from receiving a resume to rolling out an offer is 5.6 days. This period includes tasks such as screening, arranging the interview logistics, taking the candidate through three levels of interviews and rolling out the offer letter. So, technically, we have the candidate ready to join us in a week’s time. But the JIT does not work this way as the candidates have to serve their notice periods with their previous employers; this is usually 45-60 days.

Risk Involved

While there are many upsides to RPO, like everything else, it also has its share of risks. Some indicative risks are: If the RPO vendor is a wrong choice it translates into a serious single point of failure; the RPO vendor in theory should have high process awareness and maturity to enter the corporate as a change agent. As it stands, there is a lack of this key ability. Like in the IT off shoring business, many first-time outsourcing organisations think that they don’t need to stay engaged once the process is outsourced. The client must watch for complacency, especially when the RPO vendor gets into the annuity business frame-of-mind. Then, getting profiles of passive job-seekers is an issue. Besides, there’s the issue of inadequate training: Since the team is predominantly on-site, RPO vendors might not invest in their team’s training.

New Season :-: New Car

The innovative VJM02 takes to the track

The VJM02 represents a radical departure from the design ethos of its predecessor, the VJM01. This year’s contender will incorporate a Mercedes-Benz V8 engine and McLaren gearbox, thanks to a new partnership forged in November 2008 between McLaren, Mercedes and Silverstone-based Force India. Fundamental changes in the technical regulations, meanwhile, have led to a major overhaul of aerodynamics, the optional addition of KERS and a compulsory return to ungrooved ‘slick’ Bridgestone Potenza tyres.

Dr Vijay Mallya, chairman and team principal of Force India, is confident this year’s challenger will be the one to bring increased success to his young team after a frustrating points-free debut season, ‘To be brutally honest, I would not be happy if we didn’t show some much improved, and much needed, performance this season.

‘What we really set out to do over the winter was to put in place structures, procedures and partnerships that would give improvement, but crucially, no excuses. By using the same drive train as another team, Force India now has a high-level benchmark of its own performance. If performance relative to McLaren – the 2008 championship winning team – is low, there are only a reduced number of variables that need to be analysed and understood.’

Dr Mallya’s aspirations are resolutely clear: ‘I would like to see a strong start, rising to points mid-season and a definite improvement in qualifying. Regular points finishes should be the aim.’

The VJM02 has been designed in-house at the team’s UK facility by a tight-knit unit led by design director Mark Smith and technical director James Key, who have in turn been supported by a small team spear-headed by 2009 project leader Ian Hall.

In addition to the various challenges in interpreting a brand new set of technical regulations, the team has also condensed its development into just five months: the period between the McLaren deal being signed in November and the start of the season. It’s been no mean feat to get everything ready, particularly with the team not turning a wheel between its last test in November and the debut of the new car – almost 100 days.

Design director Mark Smith explains the challenge the team has faced, ‘When we confirmed the partnership on 10 November 2008 we had to adapt our plans fairly significantly. It’s not just a case of getting the new parts and installing them; when we changed the gearbox, it had slightly different suspension mountings and when we changed the rear suspension there was a necessary change on the front.

‘Normally you would have started in August, so we have had to compress everything into five months. Everyone has really worked hard to make it work and we’ve got a potentially better package, so the change has been a positive rather than a negative.’

This year, Dr Mallya will be hoping the positives far outweigh those negatives: ‘This is the year we have to deliver. We are not here to make up the numbers; I want to be pushing all the way.’

Giancarlo Fisichella will complete testing duties today and 2nd March, with Adrian Sutil getting his hands on the VJM02 for the two final days of the test.