Infrastructure, FMCG, Automotive, Pharma, Energy Companies and recently, Telecom Operators, are all knocking on Myanmar’s door. Some companies had come prepared, moved in the moment the sanctions were removed and now have a significantly successful head start in running their businesses.

Setting up shop in Myanmar is not for the faint hearted. It has many challenges, but probably the most difficult is finding, developing and retaining Burmese talent. Myanmar’s underinvestment in education, its isolation and the brain drain of Burmese talent to other part of the world has created a super storm, almost wiping out the availability of Burmese talent capable of running an international business.

This high demand and low supply of talent has created a Talent Gold Rush (like the situation I witnessed in China in the 90′s and Vietnam in the early 00′s) where new entrants are going all out to spot talent and are trying to lure them away from existing companies. Existing businesses are introducing all kinds of golden handcuffs in order to retain their staff. The few Burmese who are lucky enough to have the required skill set, fare well by this situation, as their salaries are destined to multiply of the next years. But, an ever-increasing salary spiral for the happy few is not a solution for Myanmar and those companies that are trying to build a successful and sustainable business.

For companies to succeed and for the government to ensure the economic boom trickles down to other parts of the society, both need to design a creative and holistic talent strategy. This strategy should combine casting the recruitment net wide and far, an all out effort to bring people up the skill curve in the shortest possible time and creating a heartfelt connection that binds people with the company.

The companies that prevail in Myanmar will be those that make the achievements of the country and its people their success. That success needs to be earned “Inch-by-Inch” through hard work, being smart, moving fast and a long-term focus.

The enthusiasm, energy and excitement in Myanmar is palpable; It is their time and I am sure they will capitalize on this to the fullest. Lets hope it lifts as many boats as possible and that the past decade has not created a lost generation.

- Paul Keijzer

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A lot of people are looking for jobs and trust me, times are tough. The number of resumes that we as headhunters receive from hopeful candidates is overwhelming. Some of them we can help, some of them we advice and quite a few of them we have to disappoint.

Being in the headhunting business you sometimes get the strangest requests. I am bombarded with emails that start with “Hello Sir, please give me a job in Dubai. I am ready to start next week’. It’s unbelievable the expectations that people have (as if I am running a butcher shop from which people want to choose which piece of meat they want.) I understand their bluntness, but instead of people making an effort trying to understand what it takes to land them a job in their favorite destination, they just demand it be done.

However, it is not something that can be achieved with a simple click of a button. So here are five tips to fast-track your career when there is no clear career opportunities on the horizon:

1. Know where you want to go: Be clear on what you love to do, where you can be the best in the world, where and how you can perform the job you love to do, how you can add value to companies, how you position yourself and what differentiates you from others. As the Alice in Wonderland saying goes “if you don’t know where you are going, every road will take you there.”
2. Take ownership of your own career: If you can’t find an immediate opportunity, prepare yourself and start learning for the job you want to do tomorrow. As the saying goes ‘luck is where opportunity meets preparation’. (Tomorrow Is Here Today)
3. Take initiative: suggest to your boss that you want to become responsible for this specific project. Don’t expect more money or a promotion, just do it for your own development.
4. Read, study and learn: Read a book a month, make summaries of what you read and share it with your colleagues. The best way to retain information is by teaching others. (Teach Yourself By Teaching Others)
5. Network, Network, Network: People that are able to land jobs are people who have a tremendous network and know how to use it. Don’t abuse it, use it.

Hopefully the economy will turn, companies and foreign investors will gain confidence and start investing and opportunities will come. But until that moment, get yourself in shape and be ready to ride that wave.

- Paul Keijzer

To help you answer these questions, Engage Consulting is in the process of conducting, the Most Preferred Employer Study 2013. This study is specially designed to help organizations understand the employment preferences of graduating students across Pakistan. What do these students want when it comes to finding a job? Who is their most preferred employer, most preferred industry? What benefits are they most interested or attracted to? The aim of the MPE is to focus on student’s first choice preferences, to collect data from Business, IT and Engineering students from the leading universities of the country and to help organizations understand what it takes to be the employer of choice in the talent market.

Working alongside Pakistan’s top universities, while partnering with graduating students to help collect survey responses, Engage Consulting will be helping students by giving them a voice and aiding  future employers understand the deciding factors behind what attracts fresh graduates to their desired organizations. Universities also benefit by partnering with Engage Consulting, as they have an opportunity to improve on their career development services and be recognized as a progressive university in the job market, by supporting our research.

In today’s highly competitive global economy, attracting and retaining talent is the key to success. There is a substantial and rapidly expanding body of evidence that speaks to the strong connection between employee perceptions (the people), organizational functioning (the processes) and the economic results achieved (the performance). Organizations that adopt ‘people centered’ practices can see immediate effects that can be translated into a markedly improved competitive advantage.

What factors do you think make your organization a desired work environment for graduating students? To find out what Engage Consulting uncovers about the leading characteristics that drive students to choose an employer of choice, stay tuned to read the highlights report from our findings.

Written by: Anusha Bawany
This author is the Marketing Coordinator at Engage Consulting

The question is being asked whether extensive experience helps in becoming a successful entrepreneur, and I am sure it has a significant impact. However, the list above shows that the people that really made it big didn’t have the experience, but they did have the idea, the obsession and the drive to succeed.

One of the main reasons that young entrepreneurs have been so successful is that they have got little to lose. They can go all out, take the risk, work as hard as humanly possible and if it doesn’t work, at least they can say they tried, learned from it and can try again.

As Mark Zukerberg says it: “There will never be a better time in your life to live your dream of entrepreneurship. Swing for the fences with a goal to add your name to the prestigious list above. If you fail, it will have been one of the best learning experiences of your life”

I read an article on Inc. with tips from America’s Coolest Young Entrepreneurs and picked out some important highlights:

• Simplify Your Mission: “I would encourage other entrepreneurs to spend a lot of time boiling down what their business is, what it does, and what it represents. If you nail down a 60- to 90-second synopsis, that will pay a lot of dividends throughout the life of your business.”
  - Eric Koger, ModCloth
• Ditch your safety net: “I lined up a job at Goldman Sachs. I thought I was pretty smart since this would give me a backup if the start up wasn’t working out. Looking back now, I realized that having that in hand was a reason not to push harder and higher. The day before the job started, I told them I wanted to pursue my own company. They thought I was crazy, but I think it has worked out pretty well.”
  - John Goscha, IdeaPaint
• Be Nimble: “The landscape no longer changes every two, three, four years like it did in 2002. If you’re not quick on your toes, you will miss opportunities.”
  - Tristan Harris, Apture

And my favorite:

• Don’t Go It Alone: “Surround yourself with an awesome team because you’re going to need them to overcome all the obstacles that come with starting a company. Lots of people have great ideas that they try to tackle by themselves, but I think it’s almost impossible to do everything by yourself.”
  - Emily Olson, Foodzie

I am sure there are a number of amazing entrepreneurs out there in Pakistan. People that have got great ideas but need a support network in order to make it big. I would love to contribute to the success of young Pakistani entrepreneurs. Men and women that have embarked on the journey of launching and growing their company, and in the process change their future.

I know that it can be lonely setting up a new company. Knowing whether you are taking the right steps, sharing your success and more importantly your failures so you can pick up the pieces and bounce back even stronger.

I want to reach out to aspiring young entrepreneurs that have recently started their own company, maybe have one or two other people working with them and are looking for companionship, counsel and a desire to be part of a larger group of like-minded people. If you are interested, send me a quick email at paulkeijzer@engageconsulting.biz and lets catch up and see how I can help you take your business / idea to the next level.

Go for it!

- Paul Keijzer

Candidates asking great questions stand out because they have not only properly prepared themselves, they have gone beyond that and have immersed themselves in the company and the job that is at stake. It shows not only a different level of interest but also a different level of intellect to get the job.

So here are some questions that you might ask:

• What are the outstanding achievements expected from me 12 months from now?
• What are characteristics of employees that have been successful in working with you?
• What are you looking for to determine whether a person has potential to grow in this company?
• In addition to the company values, what other characteristics do you value in your employees?
• What have been the reasons the company has been successful in the past?
• What is the reason this company exists, what contribution does it make to the larger community?
• How would you describe the leadership style of the CEO and his / her direct reports?
• What makes a person successful in this organization?

In addition to asking questions you might impress the interviewer by sharing how your recruitment would add value to the organization. You could do this by:

• Sharing a number of ideas on how you would grow the market / launch an innovation / improve a process / develop people
• Share insights on how ways of working from other industries might be applied in this company
• Highlight a number of best practices that you have picked up that might work for the organization you are applying
• Compliment the interviewer by sharing positive feedback you have heard about the organization from others

An interview is all about convincing the interviewer that you have the required skills and competencies, that you are the right cultural fit and above all how you could add value to this organization so that paying your salary is an investment on which an organization gets a greater return.

Go on – blow them away and land that amazing job you are gunning for!

- Paul Keijzer

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Employers may argue that they don’t have enough qualified and developed female employees to promote to top level positions. If that is the case, it should be the responsibility of organization leaders to invest in the female workforce and to create a corporate culture that appeals to top female performers. However, the question still remains: What appeals to the top female performers? What Do These Women Want… At Work?

According to an article by Dr. Romila Singh, “Corporate America has made huge strides in attracting top-notch female talent to their workplaces, but they rapidly lose them – not for gender-specific reasons, but gender-neutral reasons. Retention is closely tied to advancement: same for women as it is for men. What is Corporate America doing to close the revolving door for women?”

After decades of research, the question is no longer what women want or even whether their needs are similar or different from that of male employees. The question is: How do organizations ensure that they are indeed offering women the same things as they are offering men?”

Speaking to some of the top female talent in Pakistan’s corporate world, here are a few factors that came to light:

My Work Arrangements Should Be Flexible:

Flexibility is about an employee and employer making changes to when, where and how a person will work better to meet individual and business needs. Being in charge of work arrangements is something that greatly appeals to women. When balancing their personal and professional lives, women tend to favor having flexible options on how to manage their time.

According to an article I read in the economic times, written by Saundarya Rajesh, “Being able to allot some time to home-related activities even during the regular working hours, is the biggest ask from the side of the woman manager. Multiple flavors of flexible working abound – part-timing, flexi-timing, job-sharing, job-splitting, staggered work hours.”

My Work Should Be Meaningful:

In today’s world women are studying, pursuing their careers, raising children, running households and taking care of their spouses. It’s important for working women to feel and to know that what they do is meaningful. A female employee needs to feel that her time away from home and family is something that will yield her extravagant results in the future and is not going to waste. She also needs to feel that the organization depends on her and that she is valuable resource.

My Appraisal Should Be Fair:

One of the most important factors in understanding the right way to attain and retain female talent, is to understand that women don’t like to be discriminated against. The principal thought is “I am a woman, but don’t you dare hold that against me.” It’s important to note that every female in the corporate world wants to know that they are taken seriously and the playing field is leveled. A future pay raise, promotion, transfer, etc… should not be held back because the employer feels that being a woman, the employee needs to be tried and tested more.

“Never make the cardinal mistake of paying a woman less than her male counterpart.” According to Romana Khokar, Director at Engage Consulting, it is very important for a woman’s work to be appreciated by her family, colleagues should recognize the contributions and the organization should aim at consciously remove glass ceiling which prevent career progression.

- Anushey Matri
(Marketing Manager, Engage Consulting)

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So, if one of your resolutions is to fast track your best talent this year, here is a list of things Not To Do:

1. Think Small
Your department has to deliver operational results. You want to make sure you use your best player to deliver your department results, right? … Wrong! Use your best talent for delivering results that will blow your boss away. Don’t waste their abilities to deliver daily / operational tasks. Let them run. Give them challenges and make sure they constantly run in 5th gear.

2. Be Murky
Not being clear of what you expect of someone is the number one performance killer. How can people perform if they don’t know what is expected of them? Setting clear performance expectations is significantly more difficult as it sounds, as it requires you to analyze, articulate and simplify into a clear objective. Answer the following questions: What will WOW you? Will your team achieve their goals/targets by the end of the year? What would success in this project / task look like?

3. Sit On Their Head
Talent is talent because you know they have got the capability to get things done. Maybe they don’t have the experience or knowledge yet, but they are imaginative enough to figure it out or find the information they need in order to get things done. The worst thing you can do is to hold them on a tight leash. Give them the resources they need and trust them to do the rest.

4. Keep Them In The Dark
People that have talent are not only aware of the fact, but also know their market value. The best thing you can do is to acknowledge this and help your talent discover how they can achieve their potential and maximize their growth. The moment that you start hiding opportunities (inside or outside the company) you will lose their trust. Treat people with respect and help them think through the career and learning options they have. If you put yourself in their perspective and help them reach their potential, you will not only gain their trust, but maybe even their loyalty.

5. Hide Them
Talent learns from doing big things, making mistakes and a guiding hand who can help them sweat the small stuff. Above all they learn from exposure; learning from people that are better than them and being exposed to meetings, interactions, presentations, discussions that are far above their pay grade. Talent wants to meet other talent. They want to measure themselves up with others and want to network with other top performers. Not only will your talent benefit from this exposure, but the organization will benefit as well, as learning spreads around quickly. Even more importantly, you will benefit from exposing your best talent and your bosses will recognize you for the talent developer that you are.

I wish you an amazing new year and if there is one resolution for 2013 that will benefit you professionally the most it is to develop your talent. It will help them, help your company and above all help you!

- Paul Keijzer

First off, as a believer in liberty it is necessary to understand that pure “libertarian” jobs are few and far between. What I’ve come to realize is that specific issues are easier to focus on if you wish to remain pure in ideological work. There are a few staunch libertarian organizations in the current political society such as CATO or Campaign for Liberty and getting jobs with those organizations requires a lot of connections and a little bit of luck.

The best bet from what I have seen is to be willing to compromise a bit. If a free-market organization is hiring or interested in your abilities, don’t be afraid to go work for them even though they don’t advocate for drug legalization or gay marriage or whatever other issues are important to you. You can focus on specific issues at work and then advocate or volunteer for the other important aspects in your free time. Economic matters should be the most important to anyone interested in liberty, since that is where much freedom is rooted. If the government is able to steal money from you to pay for things you don’t believe in, personal liberties are put into question through those measures.

Consider working for organizations that promote free market solutions. The State Policy Network (www.spn.org) is a great place to look for jobs in state-based free market think tanks. I am currently trying to connect with the Commonwealth Foundation in Pennsylvania as one of my options. If you’re interested in grassroots and/or activism – the Leadership Institute is one of the leaders in that area of work. They are big on activism and training conservatives/libertarians on how to effectively win on principle. It is typically considered a ”launchpad” for young careers, so there is a fairly high turnover rate and jobs are consistently becoming available. They also run a job seeker website called Conservative Jobs where you can set up a profile, resume, etc., etc.

Another great organization is the Charles Koch Institute. They offer highly recognized programs such as the Koch Internship Program (KIP), Koch Associate Program (KAP), Liberty at Work and the Koch Summer Fellowship Program (KSFP). I’ve participated in KSFP and had a lot of good experience with it. Have an interview set up with KAP as well. These are good jobs for people who believe in free markets.

The Talent Market is a great resource for free market job seekers and Claire Kittle is a pleasure to work with. These tend to be more middle to high-level positions, but it never hurts to at least put your resume in with them and see what happens. You never know unless you try!

Last but not least, the Institute for Humane Studies. They have a massive amount of trainings held across the country and are full of resources for liberty-minded students and job seekers. They operate a job seeker website called Liberty Guide where you can create a profile, resume, etc. and be on the market that way.

Just wanted to share some of the outlets I am looking at right now. I know a lot of my friends in liberty are looking for jobs and internships in the movement. If you use these links and organizations listed above, you will be off to a good start!

Personal note – I’m on the market, so if anyone is hiring and would like to talk… I’m available. Working a few different angles right now with interviews coming up or ongoing. Hopefully something will work out soon.

Loyalty to ones organization has disappeared. The average number of years of service in the US in the 80′s was 23 years, but as of a couple of years ago this has gone down to an average of 2 – 3 years. What’s interesting is that when the researches asked employees why they are leaving, they replied that the company doesn’t invest in them. In return when researchers then asked the companies why they don’t invest in their employees, management stated that employees are leaving so quickly that it is not worth their money. (A classic chicken and egg situation.)

So with loyalty to employers out the window, the most important thing as a leader is to focus on getting the best out of your employee whilst he or she is with you, along with letting them know their value to the organization.

The Talent Barometer findings indicate that the two main reasons people stay with organization are (1) the good name and reputation of the company and (2) that it offers challenging and interesting work. Furthermore we know that company leaders and line managers that are able to create a trustful relationship with their employees and recognize them for their contribution, are more likely to create an environment where people want to go the extra mile and are willing to stay with the organization. In fact, employees with the highest levels of commitment perform 20% better and are 87% less likely to leave the organization, which indicates that engagement is linked to organizational performance.

How do you get the best out of your team? Are your employees being faithful, or are they looking for the next best thing.

- Paul Keijzer

Due to the lack of reliable measurement instruments, HR professionals often still operate in Babylonian times. To fill this vacuum, Engage Consulting developed an instrument that would help executives gauge whether the talent market was entering a period of high pressure (more career opportunities) or low pressure (less career opportunities). This instrument, dubbed the Talent Barometer, supports executives and HR leaders in making informed decisions for their hiring and engagement strategies.

Aiming at Pakistani professionals, from last year’s talent barometer we gained some exciting insights:

• - More than 1 out of every 2 managers are actively looking for better jobs;
• - 57% of all managers believe they can get a better job within the next 12 months;
• - The reason people leave their jobs is because of unsatisfactory compensation and lack of growth; and
• - The reason people stay in their jobs is due to challenging work and reputation of their current employer.

With this years edition of the Talent Barometer we not only want to assess the current state of the talent market but also want to identify changes from last year to this year. The results will give us the ability to asses the factors behind the decisions of the current talent market.

Gathering statistics depends on individuals helping to provide information. I am counting on all of you to assist us in collecting data! Help us in trying to better understand what motives the actions of current Pakistani employees by taking this quick survey (it will take you less then 10 minutes) : Talent Barometer 2012

To show my gratitude for all those that take part, I am excited to announce that each 100th participant will be offered a free career counseling session with me. Your views are important and will help organizations and individuals obtain a better understanding of what is happening in the Pakistan labor market.

- Paul Keijzer

So why would you go outside and ‘buy’ talent from the market? Apart from obvious reasons, such as individuals in the company don’t have the specific skill set you are looking for or that nobody can be released (which in my view is always debatable), there are a couple of reasons that justify buying from the market rather than looking for a candidate within the team.

The most important are:

• Expansion 
• Capability
• Outside – In
• Diversity
• Culture

Let’s start with the easiest one; If your organization is likely to expand in the future, then of course the decision to look outside and buy talent from the market is pretty straightforward. As the company grows, you don’t have to worry too much about the impact on current employees as they will get enough opportunity to grow in an expanding organization. Engro Foods has been a great example of this approach. They continued to recruit people from the market, whilst at the same time they accelerated the career growth of their existing team members over the past 5 years.

A shift in strategy could be another reason to buy talent in the market. If you have concluded that your past strategy will not get you to your future goals, you most likely have to invest in building new organizational capabilities. These capabilities could be anything from specific functional skills or the ‘secret sauce’ that defines your competitive advantage. It is very likely that your current team does not have these capabilities and therefor you will have to look for talent outside. Obvious example are diversified business groups like Nishat and JS that have limited food / agriculture / retail experience are now moving into the food industry.

An external recruit is often brought in to provide an ‘outside-in’ perspective. If your company is like Unilever, then your management positions are mostly filled through talent that has come through the ‘system’. While that has a significant advantage it also implies a number of dangers. Most importantly, that people will think and act alike and not be able to see things from a different perspective. A new recruit will then allow you to bring new ideas to the table.

Related to this is, of course, the business rationale behind increasing the diversity of your talent pool. The biggest stick in the mud is the absence of senior female leaders in our part of the world. We have to make a significant commitment and a huge effort to find and hire (female) talent to increase diversity in the team, helping to ensure we bring more points of view to the organization and with that improve the quality of decision making.

Finally, you can use external recruits in an effort to impact and change the culture of an organization. Of course no ‘one-man’ can change a culture, but as long as the person is appointed in a position of influence and is supported by the power structure in the organization, there is opportunity for change. This will only work if your external hiring is one of the elements of an overall cultural change program, in which current employees are also guided in what is expected of them and what is in it for them (but that brings up the topic of change management and that will require a few future blogs!)

So keep on hiring but make sure it is for the right reasons!

- Paul Keijzer

What should you do; promote or Hire?

I have always been fascinated with this dilemma; do we go outside or do we hire internally. Now external research from Wharton management professor Matthew Bidwell found that:

“external hires get significantly lower performance evaluations for their first two years on the job than do internal workers who are promoted into similar jobs. They also have higher exit rates, and they are paid a substantial premium to attract them from their previous jobs. On the plus side for these external hires, if they stay beyond two years, they get promoted faster than do those who are promoted internally”.

My whole corporate life I have worked with a company that breathed and lived the ‘promote from within’ culture and my Unilever career has been a fantastic example of its success. Of course even that philosophy can have its downside and Unilever had to recruit a CEO from outside its own ranks a couple of years ago (I will touch upon when to and what to look for in a recruit from outside in my next post).

Companies in Asia are evenly split, some are fans of the ‘recruit the best in the market’ philosophy and others are the ‘promote from within’ supporters. In the Middle East however, often due to the lack of home grown talent, companies focus on hiring the best and when their shelf life is over, hire the next person. With South Asia as a large professional talent market at their doorstep, they have been very successful in doing so and have built huge businesses as a result of it.

The biggest problem of course is that this approach works well when the going is good (and the global talent market is down) however is very difficult to sustain over generations. If you want to grow a sustainable business that to quote Jim Collins want to be “Great by Choice” then you have to make sure you grow your own talent pipeline.

So when you are facing this dilemma, try your internal candidate. You know what you get, other employees in your team will get a motivational boost as they see that career growth in your organization is possible, you get better performance for less costs and you build at the future of your company.

Not a difficult choice is it?

- Paul Keijzer

Over the years I’ve noticed the growth of  internal corporate recruiting departments has solved one problem, but created another one that is obscured by the success of the cost savings enjoyed by growing your own and not having to rely so heavily on outside recruiting agencies. This new emerging problem is growing more obvious and when the economy starts to kick into gear over the next few years, it may well become a monster of sizeable proportion. So what is this problem?

At the risk of being jeered by both my brethren on the outside, as well as by managers of internal recruiting on the inside, I offer the following: neither internal, nor external recruiting is doing their clients justice by excluding the other in favor of price. That is to say we should be working together and are instead often working at odds to each other, resulting in companies missing opportunities to get the top talent they need. There is also a growing resistance by that top talent to being exposed to any recruiting efforts that do not address their real needs.

Let me use an example of what I mean in everyday life we can all relate to. When you need a can of beans at the grocery story, you rarely look for the premium brand – beans is beans, right? So you look for the bulk store brand, which offers reasonable quality and is cheaper than outside brands.

But what about when you need that fancy brand for a certain recipe where quality matters? Now do you shop price, or by reputation and brand recognition? Obviously, when you need it, you’re willing to pay more to get more. Good grocery stores know this so they offer both, even though they make more profit on their store brand.

I use this example because recruiting too has become commoditized. Both internal and external recruiters see one another as just the same service – one is just cheaper than the other.  In fact, both perform a useful service which is vital for growing companies. But they function very differently.  Companies need mostly skilled workers and only a few talented and seasoned managers to lead them. Good workers generally apply to open job postings, but extraordinary talent and leadership is scarce and must be carefully recruited from other companies competing in the same space. That can be more challenging for internal recruiting.

“The best people usually don’t have resumes prepared, they are difficult to reach, even if you know where they are and they are in no hurry to move just because you want them to. They require a delicate approach, they need details, not just slick sales presentations. They need to be heard and understood before they will concede to any discussion beyond initial contact. They get a lot of calls and emails. Everyone wants to talk with them. They generally do not take calls from recruiters. They don’t answer their emails. They know their drill and they just don’t answer up.” — When You Have A Choice, Why Choose Us?

Unfortunately, the real talent in the Interactive Entertainment Software industry, perceives internal and external recruiters, kind of like beans too. They see them both as intent on making a placement for their client, with little time to cater to the needs of an exceptional talent – the kind that companies build around. It is a rare recruiter, either internal or external, who has the patience and professional credentials to impress them. So they move within their own trusted circles and largely ignore everyone else.

But their loss is the inability to tap into great opportunities beyond their trusted circle. So in a sense, everyone ends up paying a price when client and/or candidate representation is reduced to the bare minimum and seen as merely overhead, instead of an extraordinary investment opportunity.

Recruiting, when done well, is an invaluable resource to both companies and the talent they seek to employ. It’s also an invaluable resource for employees of all rank and contribution of talent. For if there were no access to other opportunities beyond their immediate company, salaries would be reduced and workloads would increase. Generally speaking, if companies could not find and attract better talent, their products would suffer and their revenues would decline. Everybody gets that for the most part.

But here’s something they may not see coming. If only internal recruiting, career pages and job boards are employed, anyone interested in opportunity outside their company would have to search hundreds of websites and listen to countless internal recruiters who only represent one company and one product. If they also talk with external recruiters, they can pick and choose from any number of opportunities the broader market has to offer with far less effort. Then, they can be handed off to internal recruiting who will orient them to their specific company needs and opportunities.

Applicants can also be referred by external recruiters for a nominal affiliate marketing fee. But their valuable and trusted relationships with talent they’ve helped move up over the years, who are now in leadership roles, should also be respected and highly rewarded where needed. Not excluded out-of-hand, just to save on recruiting fees – especially when hiring managers tell me they are seeing too many average applicants through their internal recruiters and far too occasionally an exceptional talent, needed for critical open positions.

Real talent deserves the right to choose and they in fact demand it. Excluding, or cheapening external recruiting to the point of driving away the better recruiters limits choice for everyone. Cutting costs for internal recruiting to minimums, also limits recruiting personnel quality, thereby reducing that company’s sales force to attract active candidates in a highly competitive market. Internal recruiting is by nature ill-suited to offer the broader market choices for opportunity passive candidates demand. But with lower overhead, comes less training and lower pay to attract quality internal recruiters who are better equipped to handle active candidates and to engage with passive candidates when the opportunity arises.

Using both internal and external recruiting as the right tool interchangibly, where best applied to the hard problems in staffing, seems to be a reasonable solution. And it is worth the investment in both resources.

Interchangibly using the right recruiting tool for the right job is sound policy and will in turn reward companies and candidates with better choices and in turn companies can receive a return far surpassing their investment in recruiting overhead.

Labor is the highest cost for most companies and hard economic times beginning in 2007 pushed companies to reduce labor across the boards. This has been hardest felt by workers who were shown the door. Wallstreet, on the other hand, loves a good purge. It means public companies can use the economy as their apologist for reducing their workforce without being made the bad guys: “sorry, the bad economy forced us to lay you off”, so they can aggressively raise profits by lowering their biggest cost of overhead. Those spared the axe are relieved to stay employed, even though their work hours have gone up, while salaries and bonuses failed to keep pace.

Consistent stock market gains in the face of near double-digit unemployment is one example of this. Another was recently reported in Mortgage Market Guide, an industry insider report to mortgage brokers:

“We have talked about how much money is on the sidelines in corporate America just waiting for the opportunity to expand, reinvest and hire…take a look at some of the staggering amounts of cash some tech giants are hoarding…Microsoft $44B, Cisco $39B, Oracle $24B, Hewlett-Packard $15B and IBM $11B.  Once there is clarity and certainty in the business climate – we will see this money starting to get put to work.”  – MMG December 1, 2010

But as the bad economy bottoms and reverses direction, recruiting may not be as simple as just re-opening the turnstiles and letting everyone herd back in. Companies are being much more selective about the quality they want to hire back. And job requirements are tightening even more, resulting in longer delays filling key open job requisitions.

The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) recently released their Leading Indicators for National Employment (LINE) and there is good and bad news between the “lines”, no pun intended. The good news is employment is cautiously moving up. The bad news is the difficulty in recruiting key positions and compensation package costs are also moving up. Jennifer Schramm, SHRM’s Manager of Workplace Trends and Forecasting was quoted:

“What is interesting is that even though employment expectations in both sectors seem to be slowing down somewhat, at the same time HR professionals are reporting that they are having a bit more difficulty recruiting for their key strategic positions this October compared with [October 2009].” – SHRM, LINE November 5, 2010

LINE goes on to report:

“Considering millions of people are actively seeking work and still cannot obtain employment in their industries, the rise in recruiting difficulty in both sectors might be attributed to new or enhanced skill requirements for new, high-level jobs in manufacturing and services, noted the report.” – SHRM, LINE November 5, 2010

These and other similar reports suggest that companies are beginning to hire selectively, but their key positions are proving more difficult and expensive to fill. The obvious take-away is that the more desirable hires for these positions are still gainfully employed by their competitors and the cost to lure them away is going up.

For those candidates in demand, this is welcome news. But for HR departments it means competition for the best and brightest is ratcheting up. They will need to start being more aggressive and cannot afford to simply wait for job postings on corporate websites to attract the caliber of talent they now require for these key positions. And as fear of making career moves wanes with general market improvement, key departures will become more frequent as well.

SHRM LINE excerpts borrowed from the November 5, 2010 report