Rehder Talent Logistics

Peter Clayton with Landed.fm

2006-05-19T13:12:00.000-07:00

Peter has provided the key note from the recent Kennedy Expo in Las Vegas on Landed.fm. David Heenan talks about the "Brain Drain" and how the next global war could be fought over human capital.

Its a must listen.

The Wharton School and the Human Capital Institute Offer Networking Event

2006-05-13T08:20:00.000-07:00

The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and the Human Capital Institute (HCI), today announced that management consultant and author Lance Berger will speak at a complimentary networking breakfast. The event, co-sponsored by Wharton Programs for Working Professionals, the Wharton Center for Human Resources, HCI, and Sequent, will take place on Wharton's campus in Philadelphia on Tuesday, May 23, from 7:30 a.m. to 9:00 a.m..

Philadelphia, PA and Washington, DC (PRWEB via HRMarketer) May 13, 2006 -- The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and the Human Capital Institute (HCI), today announced that management consultant and author Lance Berger will speak at a complimentary networking breakfast. The event, co-sponsored by Wharton Programs for Working Professionals, the Wharton Center for Human Resources, HCI, and Sequent, will take place on Wharton's campus in Philadelphia on Tuesday, May 23, from 7:30 a.m. to 9:00 a.m..

Full article.

Time to Replace Wage-Slaves with Employee Owners

2006-05-05T13:23:00.000-07:00

By Kevin Zeese

"President Bush likes to talk about an 'ownership society.' There are many steps that can be taken to create an ownership society, one critical step is to continue to expand employee-owned businesses. The Zeese for Senate Campaign presented a 'Ways that Work' Award to the Maryland Brush Company on March 21 as part of our Solutions Tour of Maryland. The award was presented to the board and 27 employee-owners of the Maryland Brush Company in order to highlight the importance of supporting employee-ownership of corporations.

The Maryland Brush Company is 100% employee owned and the employees play a major role in selecting the Board of Trustees for the company. The company was founded in 1851 as Paint and Maintenance Brushes Company and became an employee owned business in 1990 and changed its name to the Maryland Brush Company. Maryland Brush is a premier manufacturer and supplier of engineered and standard brush products to all manufacturing sectors of industry. Their focus is the design, development, manufacture and distribution of power brushes, maintenance brushes and paint applicators. They have had 150% stock increase over the past two years showing, as research has shows, that employee ownership is not only good for employees but good for business."

Full article.

Making Lemonade

2006-05-05T13:22:00.000-07:00

Sarbanes Oxley as an Opportunity for Business Process Optimization and Supply Chain Excellence

By Anthony Tarantino

"As the old adage goes, when life serves you lemons, make lemonade. In 2003, the impact of the Sarbanes Oxley Act (SOX) on finance and information technology was widely discussed as concerned professionals tried to understand the impact on their business operations. In 2004, supply chain professionals have come to understand that SOX will profoundly change their lives as well. However, the thought leaders in supply management are using this regulation to take an opportunistic view and see SOX as a means to facilitate business process optiminization and achieve supply management excellence. The laggards will take a more passive and reactive angle, viewing SOX as a passing fad or another example of government interference with no tangible benefits."

Full article.

An 'eye on the prize' helps to clear hurdles

2006-05-01T23:41:00.000-07:00

By Wallace Johnston

"I recently meet a young man. He is now 26, and at age 23 he climbed Mount Everest.

His motivation was to de termine if he could accomplish the feat using his own capacities rather than conventional strategies. He wanted to create his own challenge.

He accomplished his goal. He experienced the mountain and culture surrounding it, all by making his decisions based on his goal rather than what others had done in the past."

Full article.

I Want to be a Sports Agent

2006-05-01T23:38:00.000-07:00

A different kind of talent management.

"A blog for future sport's agents discussing sports busines news, sports law, and other interesting sports material."

Gloomy European bosses more likely to shed staff

2006-05-01T23:24:00.000-07:00

By Bill Magee

"Scots bosses and their UK and European counterparts are more likely to lay off staff in the next six months than those based elsewhere, according to a newly published global "confidence index" of business executives by management consultant McKinsey.

In contrast, the report reveals that executives based outside Europe, especially those in smaller firms, plan to hire new employees, despite expecting economic conditions to falter slightly between now and the end of the year.

McKinsey puts the European lack of business confidence down to ongoing political battles over workers' rights and social taxation, that "likely stem from the same underlying economic shifts" causing many Euro executives to reduce the size of their workforce."

Full article.

Canadians slow to fix workforce ills

2006-04-16T23:27:00.000-07:00

"If it's true that a company is only as good as its employees, Canadian businesses are headed for trouble.

Canadian companies recognize that a retiring workforce and skills gap are a threat to their performance but are doing less about it than their global counterparts, a recent Deloitte survey says.

Seventy-four per cent of Canadian respondents cited both attracting new talent and retaining it as the most critical people-issues facing their organizations, versus 69 per cent and 66 per cent of global respondents, according to a recent survey. "

Full article.

"Chick in charge" can face a challenge

2006-04-16T23:15:00.000-07:00

The business of bossing
By Kim Parson

"Being a good boss is not easy.

Being a woman and being a good boss is another set of challenges.

So say Caitlin Friedman and Kimberly Yorio, authors of The Girl's Guide to Being a Boss.

When writing their first book, The Girl's Guide to Starting Your Own Business, Friedman and Yorio struggled to cut the "Being the Boss Sucks" chapter down from 200 pages. This led to them writing a guide to going from employee to "chick in charge."

What's the biggest mistake that new managers make?"

Full article.

Talent Gap Top Concern For Corporate Leaders

2006-04-16T23:09:00.000-07:00

By Benjamin Tomkins

"Despite gathering signs of robust economic activity -- business investment is booming and GDP is growing and profits are record setting -- hushed murmurings about the jobless recovery keep flowing. The culprit is productivity. Though productivity has fueled the economic engine, the koan of doing more with less has left many workers standing on the sidelines since 2001 and dreams of late 1990s-style opportunity unrequited.

The mania for productivity has made tech hiring a zero-sum game. For example, in 2005, Apple hired 3,105, eBay 3,500, Google 2,659, Intel 14,900 and Yahoo 3,000. However, continued cost slashing and relocation of jobs out of the valley to lower cost markets offset the jobs gains; payroll stats from the state indicate Silicon Valley has only added a minimal number of jobs in 2005."

Full article.

Position Evaluation: A Starting Point for Human Resource Development

2006-04-13T10:35:00.000-07:00

by Richard Payne

"How one of our clients did it....

Mercer consultants recently worked with a company to develop a competency-based career ladder for its IT staff. The ladder is based on both position evaluation and competency profiling.

The project team first evaluated all IT positions using a job evaluation methodology. All positions were then categorized into 10 job levels based on the job evaluation results (i.e., the rungs of the career ladder).

In addition, the team identified four job families (applications, customer service, operational, and managerial) that required similar competencies.

The project team then developed a 'dictionary' of IT competencies. The dictionary identified 30 competencies that are necessary for IT staff to fulfill their responsibilities. Each competency was scaled from the level that a beginner requires to the level required by an expert."

View full article.

Seven Talent Management Practices That Matter

2006-04-13T09:51:00.000-07:00

by Tony DiRomualdo

"Competing in a 'flat world', a term popularized by columnist Tom Friedman, requires (well) rounded people. Becoming a well rounded talent requires continuous learning and development of knowledge and skills. Organizations that want to succeed in flat world competition better be creating enriching workplace experiences if they wish to attract and retain the high-caliber talent they need.

How can you create an enriching workplace? It isn't easy and doesn't happen overnight. But with some planning, a lot of persistence and adept execution of seven key practices, any organization can create an enriching workplace."

Job Stretch and Mobility
Mentoring Not Just Managing
Freedom and Stimulation
Deep Immersion
Teaching and Coaching
Diversity of Talents and Personalities
Horizontal Growth Paths

View the full article here.

Michael Homula, Director of Talent Acquisition for Quicken Loans

2006-04-06T04:49:00.000-07:00

I've known Michael personally now for about 8 months and am totally impressed with him each chance I get to talk with him face to face. If you are a CIO, CEO, etc. of any company you should call him and just "talk" to him. About 5 minutes into the conversation you'll see why I believe Michael is the type of guy that can bring a major company to "the next level."

I'm in Chicago for the HCI Summit and had dinner with Peter Clayton of Landed.fm last night. He mentioned that he just posted an interview with Michael on his site. It's a must listen.

Einstein, Compound Interest and Talent Networks - 5 Steps to Setting Talent Networking Goals

2006-03-09T08:44:00.000-08:00

Albert Einstein once called compound interest the 8th Wonder of the World and along with it he created the compound interest rule of 72. The rule tells you how to determine the number of years it will take for your investment amount to double in value. You simply divide the number 72 by the percentage rate you are earning on your investment.

For example...

"You have a savings account with $500 deposited in it. It earns 4% interest from the bank. 72 divided by 4 is 18. It will take 18 years for your $500 to double to $1,000 if you don't make any deposits."

Keep in mind, the higher the rates are the less accurate the formula is. But...Lets try applying this concept of compound interest to our network of contacts and our efforts to make the network grow. If you are serious about building a "talent network" or establishing a "talent pipeline" I would suggest using the Jobster.com services. Their current version can do the job, but I know they are actively working to make it better in new and soon to come updates.

So, if Einstein was a recruiting manager, I would guess that his strategy might look something like this.

Identify the number that your current network is at. This isn't the "total number of candidates" in your database, but rather the number of people that have "opted in" to receive information/jobs from your company. For this purpose...Lets say its 5,000 contacts.

Determine what your goal growth rate is. You will have to set realistic expectations in this matter. If you network is small now, then you can have a higher percentage of return. If your network is medium or large in size already, your percentage rate will be lower. For this purpose, lets say we want to see a 250% growth rate.

Take the # of contacts and multiply it by your growth rate: 5,000 contacts x 2.50% = 12,500 contacts. This would be your goal for the size of your new network within one year with a growth of 7,500 new contacts.

Take the new contacts number (7,500) and divide this by the number of working days in a year, which is 260. So 7,500 contacts / 260 working days in a year = 29. This means, to meat your goal... You need to add 29 new contacts a day to your talent network.

Divide the number of needed new contacts a day (29) by the number of people you have on your recruiting team. Lets say you have 6 members on your team. So, 29 new contacts divide by 6 team members = 5. This means that each team member is responsible for networking with 5 new people a day that your company has never had contact with.

Now, the tricky part. Most corporate recruiters are too busy to take on anything new....like this. So the magic comes from finding a way to accomplish this without adding work to a recruiter's desk.

Here is what I suggest. Have your "system" automatically designate the 5 new contacts for the recruiter based upon predetermined criteria. Like....specialties that your company has needs for. Present these new contacts to the recruiters in the form of a task which can be managed by the recruiter either within your "system" or within the recruiter's Outlook email program. This task then allows for follow up and task management by the recruiter and also allows for reporting for leadership purposes.

Keep the manual task of adding people who opted into your talent network OFF the recruiters desk. Within your "system", simply add a check box field to the main screen of your contact's record. The recruiter than just asks the new contact, "can we add you to our talent network, we use the Jobster networking tool." If the contact says yes...the recruiter checks the box and that's it. At the end of the day your "system admin" pulls an automatic report of all new contacts that "opted into" your talent network that day for all recruiters...and does one upload to Jobster and they all get in email that adds them to your talent network. And so it grows...

The secret to building a strong network, a viable and targeted database, is to do it on a daily basis. If you can make it happen "behind the scenes," more power to you.

Lou Adler: Three Top Concerns Facing Corporate Recruiters

2006-03-06T12:29:00.000-08:00

I just listened to a podcast by Craig Silverman of HireAbility.com and Lou Adler of Adler Concepts. I talked about Lou's Performance Profiles in an article I wrote back in October '05 about creating a Contingent Workforce Talent Management Office (CWTMO) for the Contingent Workforce Strategies magazine. I am a HUGE BELIEVER in Performance Profiles and Lou touches on that in the podcast. However, I was more interested in what Lou said were the three biggest challenges or obstacles for corporate recruiters. They were:

Too many candidates (Have to sift through too many to find the good ones).
Too many reqs.
Hiring Managers that were not 100% committed to the hiring process.

However, what really intrigued was Lou's comment after saying that. His comment was that he didn't see a solution on the horizon. Perhaps there is... the "tweaked" CRM model applied to Talent Acquisition.

First of all, you have to buy into the belief that recruiting is a lot like, if not exactly like, sales. In a sales model you have leads, contacts and products. In talent acquisition model, you have leads, contacts, candidates, and reqs.

Stephan Schiffman is a top "sales guy" and works for DEI Management. One of the sales books that he wrote is called "Cold Calling Techniques (That Really Work!)." In the book he lists what the objectives are for successful selling:

Find out what people do.
How they do it.
When they do it.
Where they do it.
Who they do it with.
Why they are doing it.

Ultimately, "Successful selling means helping people do what they do better." Sound familiar? Sounds a lot like recruiting and talent management, to me.

With a CRM type model, you can effectively take on all of Lou's top issues. With a combination of work queues, workflow and proper lead management you can take the task of filtering candidates off of the recruiter's desk and place it within the "system." The designed "system" filters, identifies, and assigns based upon existing information. Effectively living up to what Jeremy Langhans calls the sourcer's dream, "the ability to push a button & get a targeted batch of leads."

By housing Reqs in the "system" you can match them up against candidates in the proper place and proper time in the "workflow" based upon certain criteria. That criteria comes form each company's structure, roles, and available resources.

DATA IS KING.

One of the best ways to get Hiring Manager buy-in is to create a workforce strategy with them. This strategy can include a SLA that sets "commitment" levels by the Hiring Manger. The "system" then later backs up their participation, or lack there of, with simple reporting that focuses on the SLA terms that can be viewed with a Dashboard of assorted and specific reports.

With this type of process reporting, you can identify successes and failures within your process and also where candidates "drop out" of your overall process....and why they dropped off.

Anyways, if you get a chance to listen to Lou and Craig...you should. It is a "good listen."

The Current State of the Contingent Workforce - One Size Doesn't Fit All

2006-03-01T16:12:00.000-08:00

The Human Capital Institute will be putting on this webinar tomorrow in which I will be participating. I get 10 minutes to speak on Temps vs. Contract Talent. In particular:

The distinction between traditional temp labor and Contract Consulting Talent
Acquiring Consultants: HR vs. Procurement

Because time will be of the essence, and because I always like getting them, I have added a few take aways for the topic. They will be made available on HCI's site, but you can also get them through the links below.

"What Happens to your SS-8 and the IRS" & the IRS Form "SS-8: Determination of Worker Status"

The SS-8 is a form that the IRS recommends that an employer is supposed to fill out and send into the IRS when they don't know if their independent contractor is compliant or not. I would always tell companies that you should never, ever fill this out and send it in because the IRS uses them as a source for audits. The same way you never ask a cop what that tall, funny green plant is in your garden. :)

This report backs that up...I've highlighted it in red on the first page. I also included the SS-8 document so they know what it looks like.

IC or Employee - The IRS Training Manual

- always nice to have.

Manager Independent Contractor Compliance Questionnaire and Contractor Independent Contractor Compliance Questionnaire

Screen shots of the questionnaires that I recommend companies ask their hiring managers and IC's. If you view images through your browser, you may have to save the links and open them with another application (like paint) to view the shots.

Approved Vendor List, Independent Contractor and Consultant Directory, and the Preferred Agency List

A very general starter kit for companies to start identifying their professsional CW. Hopefully, it will get people start thinking about what will work best for them.

Managing Your Contingent Workforce

The article is a 3 part story with my section as the anchor piece. It proposes the idea of forming a Contingent Workforce Talent Management Office (CW-TMO) within the walls of a corporation. :)

ERE Recruiting Conference

2006-02-28T16:33:00.000-08:00

San Diego, March 14-16, 2006

Myself and several other recruiting industry people will be getting together for some Texas Hold'em poker for charity, food and drink "after hours" during the Electronic Recruiting Exchange Conference in San Diego the night of Wednesday, March 15th at the Sheraton. I've gotten Salesforce.com to underwrite the fun and it looks like it is going to be a great "event" in itself. I'm quite proud of the quality and quantity of the night's guest list and am looking forward to it in a big way. It will be interesting to see who can bluff and who can't. :)

So far, here are the attendees:

Jeff Hunter, Director, Global Talent Technology at Electronic Arts
Cindy Haugh, Senior Director, Global Talent Hiring and Resourcing at Electronic Arts
Michael Homula, Director of Recruiting, Quicken Loans
Dan Hilbert, Employment Manager at Valero Energy
Gerry Crispin of CareerXroads
Mark Mehler of CareerXroads
Simon Meth, principal with Kettelhut and Meth
Jeremy Langhans, principal with Jeremy Langhans & Associates
Ralph Nadel, Talent Acquisition Consultant at Fair Isaac Corporation
Jason Roberts, Operations and Optimization Manager at CISCO Systems
Dart Lindsley, Senior Business Process Architect at CISCO Systems
Lee Elliott, Vice President for Human Resources at Saint Francis Medical Center
Christina Powell - College Talent Acquisition Manager at Newell Rubbermaid
Jill Turner - College Talent Acquisition Specialist at Newell Rubbermaid
Mike O'Donnell - Talent Acquisition Manager at Newell Rubbermaid
Lou Adler, President of The Adler Group
David Manaster, President of Electronic Recruiters Exchange (ERE)
Jason Goldberg, Chief Jobster/CEO of Jobster.com
Paul Westmoreland, Sourcing/Recruiting Manager North America of Freescale (formerly Motorola SPS)
Bill Evanow, Vice President of Sales, Northwest for SalesForce.com
Mike Euglow, Director of Recruiting, Sales and Services for SalesForce.com
Scott Robarge, Sr. Recruiter for SalesForce.com
Scott Morrison, Recruitment Marketing Manager for SalesForce.com
Peter Clayton, Senior Producer/Director for www.Landed.fm
Susan Burns, Worldwide Talent Acquisition Leader at Waggener Edstrom Worldwide
Jodi Moore, Staffing Partner at Waggener Edstrom Worldwide
Stephen Fogarty, Staffing Partner at Waggener Edstrom Worldwide
Marlon Sullivan, Senior Director, Staffing at Home Depot
Tracy Poole, Director, Talent & Recruiting at Expedia
JT Monahan, Recruiting Manager at Expedia
Kathleen Ash, Manager, Recruiting Programs at Expedia
Russell Glass, VP of Marketing at ZoomInfo
Chris Bashian, Account Representative at ZoomInfo

Looking forward to seeing everybody there.

First Blog...

2006-02-27T14:57:00.000-08:00

This is the first blog which will hopefully be of many. It will be a story of sort, a story of how myself and some others are trying to change the way corporate talent acquistion works and the way it is viewed as a whole. This is not a form of evolution. It is not a gradual change... not simply doing what we do now a little different.

Rather, it is a drastic yet "easy to make" change in the style, the effort, the focus, and the end results of the way it is now.

Welcome to the revolution. Knock on wood. ;)