Edge the Engineer Recommends TechRepublic.com

As has been noted far too many times, Edge is an engineer (not like Choo-Choo Charlie) who has worked on software, hardware, and systems selection and development. So technology has always come easily.

But I also realize (I really dislike speaking in the third person) that some find it a challenge. Here's a suggestion...

Check out and sign up for newsletters available on TechRepublic (it's free). In today's email came the following:

Use this simple process for package or vendor selection

Included are several Excel spreadsheets that you can modify when selecting an ATS or any recruiting/HR technology.


Give it a shot!

Was I wrong about OSHA?

If you've been a reader of my blogs you know that I'm not a big fan of the benefit of labor-related government and state agencies and associated programs; the EEOC and how it hunts down companies purportedly behaving badly comes quickly to mind as does the OFCCP's definition of an Internet applicant. But I believed that OSHA actually was not only noble in its intentions but also righteous it its results.

Then I read a story in today’s protector of liberal values, my revered NY Times, entitled OSHA Leaves Worker Safety in Hands of Industry, and I have to question my belief in OSHA. Sniff, sniff, sniff…

At a Congressional hearing this week, a tepid response from an OSHA official to a seemingly serious health issue at a company in Missouri appears to reflect OSHA’s current practices; the Bush administration “vowed to limit new rules and roll back what it considered cumbersome regulations that imposed unnecessary costs on businesses and consumers. Across Washington, political appointees - often former officials of the industries they now oversee - have eased regulations or weakened enforcement of rules on issues like driving hours for truckers, logging in forests and corporate mergers.”

According to occupational health experts, “since [Bush] became president, OSHA has issued the fewest significant standards in its history, public health experts say. It has imposed only one major safety rule. The only significant health standard it issued was ordered by a federal court.”

It is further noted in this article that since 200, 3 of the biggest industries regulated by OSHA (transportation, agribusiness, construction) have given more than $630 million in political campaign contributions with nearly three-quarters of that money going to Republicans.

It is truly difficult to trust any of these agencies who promise to protect companies and employees.

Cut Benefits, Hamper Recruiting

From the National Business Group on Health, a non-profit association of 266 large U.S. companies:

• Despite rising costs, a vast majority of U.S. workers say they are very satisfied with their employer-provided health care benefits.
• Most workers consider the health plan to be their most important benefit and they have little interest in purchasing coverage on their own.
• Employees are generally unwilling to reduce their health benefits in order to increase other benefits such as a retirement savings plan.
• 65% of employees support the idea of charging smokers more for their health coverage, although fewer workers, 51%, favor increasing costs for obese employees.
• 67% consider their health plan to be excellent or very good.
• 75% value the health plan as the most important benefit versus 14% who consider a retirement savings plan to be most important.
• 60% of workers place high value on having a health plan that is easy to manage, allows freedom to choose doctors, and limits their cost when they visit a doctor or get a prescription.
• Less than 40% consider having a plan that covers serious illness rather than routine care or offering incentives for healthy lifestyles to be very important.
• Employees are generally split between preferring low medical co-payments or low premiums. However, more than half of employees would accept fewer plan choices in order to keep their health premium costs low
• About three in four employees would prefer to get health benefits through their employer rather than getting additional salary to purchase their own.
• 57% are at least somewhat opposed to having the employer contribution to their health plan premium treated as taxable income.
• About six in ten workers are not too willing to reduce their health benefits in order to improve their retirement benefits, or vice versa.
• 83% would rather see their salary or retirement benefit reduced rather than health benefits if their employer need to reduce total compensation.

Says Helen Darling, President of the group, "The fact that so many employees are opposed to giving up any aspect of their health benefits, even in return for an improvement in other benefits, speaks volumes as to just how important they are from a worker and employer perspective. As the labor market tightens, employers will need to place an increased emphasis on their health benefits if they want to be able to compete for talented workers."

Business Group: Press Room

The national online survey was conducted in February, 2007, by Mathew Greenwald & Associates, Inc., on behalf of the National Business Group on Health. A total of 1,619 randomly selected workers participated in the survey. To participate, workers had to be age 22-69, be covered by their employer’s health plan, currently work for an employer with at least 2,500 employees and be a decision-maker in their household regarding health care. The margin of error is plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.

Calling Female Computer Science Majors...

Computer Science Takes Steps to Bring Women to the Fold

According to the article, "Women received about 38 percent of the computer science bachelor’s degrees awarded in the United States in 1985, the peak year, but in 2003, the figure was only about 28 percent, according to the National Science Foundation.

"At universities that also offer graduate degrees in computer science, only 17 percent of the field’s bachelor’s degrees in the 2003-4 academic year went to women, according to the Taulbee Survey, conducted annually by an organization for computer science research."

Also from the article,

These experts play down the two explanations most often offered for flagging enrollment: the dot-com bust and the movement of high-tech jobs offshore.

"People think there are no jobs, but that is not true," said Jan Cuny, a computer scientist at the University of Oregon who directs a National Science Foundation program to broaden participation in computer science. "There are more people involved in computer science now than at the height of the dot-com boom."

And there is widespread misunderstanding about jobs moving abroad, said Ed Lazowska, a computer scientist at the University of Washington. Companies may establish installations overseas to meet local licensing requirements or in hopes of influencing regulations, he said, "but the truth is when companies offshore they are more or less doing it for access to talent.

"Cheap labor is not high on the list," Dr. Lazowska said. "It is access to talent."

One way the Edge accesses talent is by calling them as soon as possible - waiting until the job is available is too late. Another is to expand the ubiquitous "take your child to work" day concept and into programs like Brown University's Artemis Project that is mentioned in the article.

Your workforce planning strategy can never begin too early.

Why Most Government Agencies are Lagging

A Few Good Lawyers - New York Times

"Those of us hurrying to finish our taxes by tomorrow’s deadline will probably, at some point, succumb to thoughts of the I.R.S. as an all-powerful bully. But the truth is, the government is not always a match for the tax advisors of wealthy people, so a lot of taxes will go unpaid at the top of the income scale. Lawyers who represent high-income taxpayers earn more than 10 times what senior government lawyers do — an obvious disadvantage for the I.R.S., the Departments of Justice and Treasury, and for Capitol Hill in attracting and retaining top talent."

"First, the government should focus on hiring talented young lawyers, since the pay disparity with the private sector is narrower for them. For example, new I.R.S. lawyers earning $65,000 to $70,000 are making about 50 percent of the starting salary in the private sector; by contrast, senior lawyers there earn barely 10 percent of a partner’s compensation at a leading law firm. To his credit, the I.R.S. Chief Counsel, Donald Korb, is already trying to recruit young lawyers. These efforts will be more effective if Congress helps new graduates repay student loans, which often are more than $100,000. A loan repayment program would be a powerful recruiting device."

"Second, the government should tap another promising talent pool — recent retirees from private practice — to mentor young lawyers. The salary gap is less of an issue for retirees, and the opportunity to give back to the tax system can be quite appealing."

"Third, the government should retain a small team of a dozen top tax lawyers at salaries closer to the market rate. They can serve as a rapid reaction force, deciding whether to shut down a new aggressive strategy immediately or to let it be evaluated through usual government channels."

Same goes for the EEOC and related Federal and State agencies...

The 100 Smartest Companies of 2007

The effective analysis and use of information can set a company apart, as Baseline's list of the 100 smartest U.S. Companies shows. Not a bad way to target where to recruit...

Also included in the article is a spreadsheet (Baselinemag.com requires a free sign-up) that you can use to measure how smart your company is relative to your competitors. Just like asking your CFO for the metrics used to measure your company's health and performance (and turning these metrics into recruiting metrics) is smart recruiting leadership, smart-metrics can also be valuable in developing your sourcing strategy.

"Old methods will do harm."

There’s a great article posted today over on ERE by John Wilson of Wilson Recruiting about Generation Y and the basic disconnect between generations. It’s called “Why Generation Y Hates You” and its sub-title boasts “How it happens and how to turn it into an advantage”.

He begins by warning us that our old methods “will do harm”.

He’s absolutely right. He goes on to report on a meeting where a recruiter “sat in” on a speaker-phone meeting between hiring managers and prospective candidates. The recruiter was stunned to hear an interrogatory approach that was interpreted by most candidates as confrontational.

"The managers were asking provoking questions including, "Why do you want to work for us?" and "Tell me why I should not end this interview after 20 minutes?"

I am horrified to think (and I believe it IS happening) that passively sourced candidates are being treated this way. We're beating our brains out here and working our dial fingers to the bone trying to locate these people and some of them are approached like this? I shudder to think.

I think about the disconnect I see between the young lab rat, Greg Sanders, on CSI Las Vegas and his older crime scene co-workers – how sometimes he just looks at them and shakes his head, confident in his own skin and talent in spite of his young years.

It falls on our shoulders to educate our hiring managers about what exactly it is we’re bringing to their thresholds and that these truly passive potential candidates need to be approached in a consistently different manner. If we want this process of sourcing we’re trying so hard to get others to adapt to be adapted we better be prepared to spend some long hours exerting some early influence into the process.

There’s a lot of confidence out there and a lot of prowess in these young lions and we’d better listen up and pay attention to the new marching tune. If we’re going to continue to put these promising young cadets at a distance (on the defense) when we contact them we deserve to fail in our hiring efforts, we deserve to lose out to cultures and companies who “get” the basic tenets of civility.

Any of you have any ideas how we can do this and can you share with us how you would recommend approaching a passive candidate about a new “opportunity”?

Recruiting.com. Talkdigger, Slashdot, Digg, Delicious.

Maureen is coming to San Jose to speak on telephone names sourcing at the April 24 meeting of the Human Resources Consultants Association at the Adobe Park Conference Room in San Jose! Contact Merrill Martin at merrillm at yahoo-inc.com

Maureen is also presenting a ONE DAY Magic in the Method LIVE telephone names sourcing training seminar on April 25 at Adobe Systems FUJI Room in San Jose – for more info contact Bob Sharib at bob at techtrak.com or visit here to register online at Magic in the Method seminar/Silicon Valley.

It took 3.6 million years to make a Project Manager. You have until Wednesday to find him. Call us.
Our goal is to save you time and help you succeed.

Maureen Sharib is a seasoned telephone names sourcer, names sourcing since 1997. She and her husband Bob own the names sourcing firm TechTrak.com and Maureen telephone-names sources daily as well as teaches telephone-names sourcing in her online telephone names sourcing course "The Magic In The Method." She can be reached by email at Maureen at techtrak.com or by phone at (513) 899-9628. Maureen will come on-site to your company to teach telephone names sourcing to your sourcers.

A Case for Character

[originally written on 11/16/2004 and reposted from my ERE blog]

Sometimes I think there are really only two questions that recruiters need to ask – sorry Lou Adler, two, not one: The first is just an amalgam of all variants of behavioral interviewing (yes, this is where Lou Adler gets a shameless plug for his single, greatest interview question of all time). But to master the one question really requires an in-depth understanding of everything about the job.

Since so many recruiters just aren’t up-to-speed in terms of content – I mean, who has the time to really learn, for example, finance when all you really need are the buzzwords to conduct an effective interview, right? ;) – most recruiters might just as well ask a simple “Yes or No” question, something like this:

“Look, let’s cut to the chase – this position is for a CFO of a multi-billion dollar multinational. You’ve read the job description so here’s my question: Have you been the CFO of a multi-billion dollar multinational corporation where you’ve increased profits as measured by EVA by at least 15% annually over the past three years without putting the company under SEC scrutiny? Now before you say yes, if you haven’t and you lie, then you’ll be fired without any severance and your reputation will be smeared from here to the end of the earth. Now, what is your answer?”

Perhaps is conjures up thoughts of the bridge scene from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” (“What is your quest?”). In reality, it is a simple binary - “Yes or No” – that might take about two minutes to ask and answer. If done correctly, for most it is about as effective as a battery of highly targeted behavioral questions (which ultimately get at the same result – assessing whether the candidate can perform the job as described). Since so many recruiters and hiring managers do a less than stellar job at behavioral interviewing - incidentally, this is the greatest opportunity for improvement in our profession; and this opportunity for improvement is part content knowledge, part learning how to effectively drill down - heck, most might as well just ask a “Yes or No” question and move on to a far more difficult trait to assess…Character.

Cicero, the Roman Empire-era philosopher believed that “Within the character of the citizen lies the welfare of the nation.” To paraphrase Cicero, within the character of the employee lies the greatness of the company. Recruiters need to understand how this applies to their company or client and then come up with specific ways to assess character in the same way they focus on work-related behaviors. Because at the end of the day, it is those who are of exemplary character who will create the most value for a company.

Specific ways? How about a business ethics question related to a specific event or series of events that took place in your organization? Something with many levels, potential traps, dead ends, etc. You’ll have to do your homework for this one folks – talking to C-levels, hiring managers, direct reports, suppliers, et. al. – and you may get some funny looks, but when you start talking about why employees really fail to make the grade, once you get past the “Well, they just couldn’t do the job” excuse and dig deep…the reason they failed was most likely character-based.

In interviewing for character and when using developed business scenarios, consider some of the following questions (tailor them anyway you want):

How do you define character?

• What values are the most important ones to you as you make daily business decisions?
• How do you think your company defines values and values training?
• What are some of the values highlighted in your work?
• To what extent do you feel that your values have been consistent with your employer’s values?
• How do you incorporate character development into interactions with your subordinates?
• How do you handle situations in which peers hold conflicting values or express values contrary to what you believe are the norms of your employer?
• What skills do employees need to possess to be able to determine viable alternatives, hold options up to critical examination, and develop strong rationales for their positions as they solve problems and make decisions?
• In what ways should employees and their bosses demonstrate care and concern for each other?
• How often and in what context are values-oriented issues discussed in your business meetings?
• To what extent have your peers been aware of their role in transmitting values to employees?

What criteria should be used to assess the success of a company’s character training program? According to these criteria, how successful are your company’s character training efforts? What would make them more effective?

Character is a rather arcane concept because it means so many things to different people. But assessing character as it relates to one’s organization is the first step in promoting the Daffodil Principle. Ever plant daffodils? Know what happens the next bloom? There are more daffodils – and the bloom is stronger. What recruiter wouldn’t want to be part of a success like this? Rhetorical question, right?

Here’s why you should seriously consider assessing character…

Last Monday I attended the funeral of a United States Marine killed ten days ago in Iraq – I know, well knew, him and his brother (“oddly” enough, also a Marine as was their Dad and Grandfather). Matt Lynch was a Duke grad who when asked by his Dad what his plans are now that he’s entering the “real world” responded by saying, “‘Dad, the Marine Corps, of course.” He went to Marine Officer Candidate School, then IOC, then E/2/5 and the 1/5 – at one point, he was stationed in a place called Karma (it was a good omen). After his second tour in Iraq, he had the option of going home; instead, learning that his old and intact 2/5 was headed back to Iraq, he chose to go back saying, “They are my guys, I’m going.”

Matt was killed on October 30, 2004, the victim of a roadside bomb. Even in death, character prospers according to the Daffodil Principle.

After the funeral, many of us assembled at a local restaurant, told stories, and yes, hoisted many a toast in the late soldier’s honor. What was clear to me – aside from the buzzing in my head (for the record, Marines can put away adult beverages at an alarming rate), was how so very much alike each Marine was – especially as it pertained to character.

Now I’m not talking about the four guys I spent hours with – every Marine I met this day was of exemplary character – seriously, the kind of person every Mother and Father wants to meet. And commitment – each of these Marines would put their life ahead of each other. Absolutely amazing – how did the USMC recruiters do such an exemplary job in selecting people who were so in tune with the Marine way? Sure Marines are “made” but there has to be something in there to work with. So how do the Marines select on the basis of character? I’ll touch upon this in a very near future post.

Again, I believe that character really does matter. What do you think?

Blown Circuit: Circuit City and It's Impact on Recruiting

This past week saw quite a few articles on Circuit City's laying off 3,400 of their most experienced sales clerks; my two favorites were David Carr's "The Media Equation" column entitled, Thousands are Laid Off: What's New? and Maureen Rogers, Pink Slip blog post, Circuit City: Layoff Circuits on Overload.

In case you missed it, they "fired the cream of their work force, not even giving those employees a chance to re-apply immediately for their job at lower wages until after a cooling-off period of 10 weeks. In doing so, the company engaged in a kind of domestic outsourcing." What they also succeeded in doing was destroying one employment brand and replacing it with it's sinister twin. I wonder if the recruiting leaders at CC even put up a fight?

In his Times column, Carr wrote that "Circuit City seems to have forgotten that the customer interaction — the user interface...is their point of difference in an age when consumers can have perfect pricing information with the click of a mouse." As Christopher Martin, Associate Professor of Journalism at Miami University noted, “In a service economy where all the books say you are supposed to put the customer first, Circuit City is doing exactly the opposite.”

In the same way, the rank-and-file employees are a company's point of difference not the C-levels. Yet it appears as if this concept is lost on the Circuit City decision makers - on the Circuit City website is this gem:

Our Associates are our greatest assets. We expect every Associate to demonstrate that they respect and value others for their efforts, their knowledge, and the diversity that they bring.

For all the rhetoric accorded ethics and rusing in the ERE community, nowhere has anyone brought up the word "backbone" - as in where was the backbone of the head of Circuit City's recruiting team when all this carnage was taking place?