I just got back from the second day of the ERE Spring Expo, where the crowds had thinned a little but the conversation was no less informative. Here are a few sound bites to give you a flavor of today’s sessions:
“Hiring is not just staffing’s responsibility – it’s up to everyone.” – Kat Drum, Starbucks. Kat talked about easy ways to leverage the rest of the organization in recruiting – for instance, encouraging your hiring manager to update their status on LinkedIn to announce open positions. She also reminded the audience that when it comes to building employer brand, every employee should think of themselves as an ambassador - echoing Dan Black of Ernst & Young’s assertion yesterday that ‘Our brand has 130,000 touchpoints.”
“Good recruiters will determine if they are interested in the candidate – not the other way around.” – Lou Adler. Lou’s presentation was all about taking control of the process, thinking like a headhunter rather than a recruiter and cherry-picking the best passive candidates, by driving employee referrals and otherwise, to stay out in front of the imminent ‘hiring tsunami’.
“Full lifecycle recruitment is a complete waste of time – experts get the job done better and quicker.” – Erin Peterson, Hewitt Associates, who presented a compelling case for dividing the workload among specialized recruiters, sourcers and operations people. This flew in the face of Ginny Eagle’s comment yesterday in the downturn panel (“Great recruiters love sourcing and really should do it themselves”) which itself generated some lively discussion among the Twitter, who mostly implored that recruiters be allowed to “focus on the relationship and the close, the things they do best.”
“It takes a village. Get help outside of your own team.” – William Uranga of TiVo, in a frank group discussion on how to fix things the elements of your recruiting process that are clearly broken. William has successfully enlisted the help of TiVo’s user research group in designing surveys, customer support for inspiration on messaging to candidates, and the marketing creative team for broader help on how to position TiVo in the recruiting context.
All in all, it’s been a great two days of education and networking. Now comes the hard part: implementing all those learnings.
Topics: Recruiting tips
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