QofH is logically a simple operation: define success and then measure the hire against that definition. Pragmatically, however, this task can loom menacingly to talent acquisition leaders faced with decades’ old job descriptions and time-strapped hiring managers.

“If you can’t bring Mohammed to the mountain, bring the mountain to Mohammed.” This cliche? is a fitting descriptor of the struggle to define and impact quality of hire. Let’s begin a conversation today on how recruitment can be the catalyst that improves business performance through determining what job “success” looks, feels and smells like. We talked last week with Phil Haynes, Director at AllianceQ about how to partner with hiring managers and affect the selection outcome- great quality hires.  Phil says:

Quality of Hire is:

• More than a single measurement

• Variable across business units/teams

• Agreed on before recruiting starts

• Measured over time

• Controllable

• Recruiting Department’s responsibility

I really liked Phil’s take on an “Ideal Candidate Competency Map”- check it out.

Top business schools share a common mission: producing educated and innovative leaders equipped to manage even the most challenging of today’s organizational issues. The best have even turned the traditional silo approach on its head to a curriculum of multi-disciplinary entrepreneurial-style management functions.

Is it possible to hire great young leaders from global business schools? Yes.   Today we heard Caroline Emmons, University Relations Consultant at Aetna, on devoting recruitment efforts to capturing the best and brightest emerging graduates.

Caroline discussed how to select business schools to recruit on, building a brand that appeals to MBA students, the importance of business-school recruiting in building a diverse leadership pipeline, and how to develop a great summer associate program.  She ended the webcast with the “Top 5 Ways to Retain MBA Hires,”  which I’ll share here.

Graduate Management Admission Council’s 2008 Corporate Recruiters Survey found the following strategies to be the most effective in retaining full-time MBA hires:

1.Employees are given challenging and interesting assignments

2.Employees have ample opportunities for growth and development

3.My company is well regarded by people looking for work

4.Company leadership is accessible and provides vision and direction

5.Salaries and bonuses are linked to performance or the development of competencies

Bill Taylor had a great post on Tuesday with advice for leaders in tight economic times, and it inspired me to tweak it slightly for talent acquisition- I saw many parallels.  Be sure to check out the original post here.

1. Don’t just remake your [recruiting] process, reassert your mission statement.  Taylor says “Be sure to remind your colleagues, your customers, and the world at large why what you do matters, why you started the company in the first place, and what kind of impact you’re trying to have on the world.”  Not only is this sage advice for recruiting Millennials, it is manna for every generation of candidates, not matter what the financial times are a’doin.

2. Have a fresh and original take on what’s happening now.  “How did Milton Hershey, the candy giant, respond to the Great Depression? With a “Great Building Campaign” that kept all his people employed, resulted in such legendary structures as the Hotel Hershey and the Hershey Theater–and laid the foundation for a resilient corporate culture.”  If your organization is innovative, and you’d better be, talented individuals will be excited about getting to be creative on the job.  And great hires usually bring more great people with them.

3. Sure, you should manage your financial capital carefully.  “But you should manage your “relationship capital” even more carefully.”  This assertion can draw direct correlations to retaining your terrific employees… but could also be applied to the value of your talent brand.  If you have a well established employment value proposition, don’t squander it.  If you don’t yet, build one!  This can be the perfect time to put a lot of energy into building a workforce pipeline- when you aren’t shouldering requisition loads that would squash mere mortals.

4. Invite your people to help figure out the future.  “There is “hidden genius” all around you, from the quiet genius of your colleagues to the collective genius that surrounds your organization.”  You don’t have all the solutions.  But you have exceptional people- with exceptional ideas- in your circles of influence.  Ask questions- now is a great time to become better.

UPDATE:  By the way, Bill Taylor is a keynote at the HCI National Summit in March.  Read all about it.

She’s the “Research Goddess” for a reason.

Candidate coaching and relationships are a great thing.  Is your work meaningful?  Brazen Careerist

Whoa, Nellie.  CollegeRecruiter.com reports “Employers Admit to Disqualifying Candidates Due to Facebook Content.”

How is top talent dealing with tough times on Wall Street? Sylvia Ann Hewitt

In part one we looked at designing a productive internship strategy.  Today we’ll look closer at how to recruit interns.

Rich (Bottner, President and CEO, Intern Bridge) points out that employers need to think constructively at the compensation they offer to interns- they take the position that all internships- with few exceptions- should be paid, and that all compensation should be equal based on position.  Rich also mentions that it is important to think about adverse impact when offering “no compensation” internships- are you effectively removing less-advantaged students from your candidate pool because they can’t afford to work unpaid?

The number one reason college students are interested in internships are to “gain real work experience” according to Intern Bridge’s study.  This is an attraction tool!  Be sure to highlight what actual responsibilities your intern will have.

Target the most appropriate universities- Rich says don’t just choose “feeder” schools to be competitive, and be sure to consider transportation issues ahead of time.  More results from the survey:  the #1 source of hire for interns? Personal contact. 

More questions?  I’ll encourage you to reach out to Rich.  He also was generous enough to give HCI Talent Acquisition blog readers a promo code- use code “HCI” to receive a 15% discount off of any purchase until 10/31/2008.  Thanks Rich! 

Why does having a well-designed and implemented internship program matter?  According to Richard Bottner, CEO and President of Intern Bridge, for several reasons:

• Because interns will be ambassadors- or adversaries- of your organization- the difference is entirely in how they are challenged and managed.
• Because college campuses are viral communities- Rich says, “if you are going to host interns- make sure it’s done correctly.”

So why listen to Rich?  Intern Bridge conducts an internship annual study.  2007 saw results from over 12K respondents- from over 50 majors at public, private, and 2- and 4-year degree programs.  Their study revealed that a whopping 65% of respondents said that their individual internship program needed improvement.

Why do students seek internships?  #1:  To Gain Real Work Experience.  Not to stuff envelopes, be a gopher, or surf the Internet aimlessly.  The first step to a productive program involves creating meaningful and experiential work duties for the intern.  Rich advises to consider 2 factors:  1)What is the objective of the work?  Or, what do you expect the intern to learn (yes, learn) from the activity?  2) What is the learning task?  Or, how will the intern accomplish the learning objective?  If you can’t answer both of these questions, chances are the work you are thinking of assigning to your intern is menial and probably not a terribly good use of their time and abilities.

Let’s also make sure you are choosing the appropriate supervision for your young intern.  Have you assessed or evaluated the intern’s supervisor on his or her abilities to manage college-age interns?  Remember:  a great manager of experienced employees may not necessarily be a good fit.

We’ll check back in tomorrow on how to recruit interns.

As a (hint hint) reminder, HCI has set up a cool new social network just for human capitalists over here.  We’ll eventually also be moving our traditional post-webcast discussions over there also- I hope you’ll join in the conversation!

We were very fortunate today to have heard from Dr. John Sullivan and Master Burnette of Dr. John Sullivan and Associates on today’s webcast on “Sourcing on Social Networks.”  And oh boy- did we get a lot of questions!  I’ll do my best to re-capture some of the highlights here.  HCI audiences are always so smart.

One question that comes up in every social networking conversation is from what can be best classified as the metrics-driven recruitment manager who asks:  “Social networks are great, sure.  But can anyone share an actual hire from social networking?”  Is it appropriate to measure the effectiveness of social networks as recruiting tools in this way?  Does an organization measure an advertising campaign with a end result focused completely on how many new customers it acquires?  Sometimes.  But perhaps the true efficacy of social media as a tool in talent acquisition is to measure the labor pool created, or the talent brand awareness generated.  Certainly direct hires are appreciated.  But they are hardly ever created as a result of one single recruitment action.

How should talent acquisition professionals respond to critics that say most social networks sites aren’t professional enough as a sourcing destination for “our” company?  Dr. Sullivan suggests - to use his words- those negative comments usually come from “old fart” recruiters.  Yeah, he said it, and I repeated it.  Because it’s been my experience too!  Simply put- if your organization isn’t working feverishly to build a great talent pipeline- including sourcing on your favorite social site- you probably have weekly meetings defending your org’s recruiting ability to executive leadership.

I’m headed out to Baltimore today for HCI’s 2008 Talent Management Forum for Government.  I am thrilled to be live-blogging the event for all of you in reader-land that can’t attend.  I’ll be blogging over at the Talent Economy so be sure to check it out!  Feel free to pass along questions and/or comments and I’ll propose them to the speakers if you want.  I’m really excited about the excellent thought-leaders that will be speaking- here’s a couple of them!

Dr. Paul Light, Paulette Goddard Professor of Public Service, Robert Wagner School of Public Service, New York University:  The Role of Talent in Federal Government Performance:  Ok, Dr. Light has written the book on government roles- literally.  He’s the co-author of one of the most popular government textbooks ever- Government by the People.  Prior to joining NYU, he was the Douglas Dillon Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, founding Director of its Center for Public Service, and vice president and director of the Governmental Studies Program.

Dr. Harry Hertz, Director, Baldrige National Program, and Dr. Joseph King, Chief Talent Officer, ARDEC: The Future of Talent Management - Assessing Today to Plan for Tomorrow: Is anyone else impressed with Dr. King’s title?  And don’t forget- this is government, people!  In 2007 ARDEC won the Malcolm Baldrige Award for Quality Excellence.

John Palgutta, Vice President for Policy, Partnership for Public Service, and Jim Blades, Deputy Director, Contracts and Grants Management, Millennium Challenge Corporation: Contract Talent- Effective Talent Management in a Workforce Dominated by Contractors Today and the Millennials of Tomorrow: The summary for this presentation says that according to a recent GAO report 80% of the federal workforce are contractors.  Whoa.  I’m also continually impressed by the Partnership for Public Service- we recently had Tom Fox from the Annenberg Leadership Institute present a terrific webcast on Who Will Lead Us?

I’ll be taking a break mid-day to moderate what I am sure will be an awesome webcast:  Sourcing Through Social Networks, presented by Dr. John Sullivan.

Why should your organization have an alumni program?  According to Katya Meza-Doyle and Anne Doubet from Accenture, “In today’s ‘relationship economy,’ strong relationships are critical to success.”  Additionally, they surface the impact that alumni can have in key areas such as business development, recruitment, retention, transition support, knowledge sharing, and brand awareness.  This is the topic for today’s webcast in Talent Acquisition and Employee Referral Networks.

So what are the keys to success in designing and maintaining a network for corporate alumni?  It is necessary, they propose, to design a win-win proposition that includes: “a program that supports business objectives, a comprehensive approach that compels alums to continually engage, to embrace an enduring relationship with former employees, and to take a holistic approach by creating linkages to key processes and contexts.”

Social networking is and should be pervasive… successful organizations simply cannot afford to overlook this valuable resource.  In an article from Harvard Business Review, co-authored by Cem Sertoglu and Anne Berkowitch, founders at SelectMinds, the roles that alumni play are illuminated:

Rehires and Referral Sources It costs half as much to rehire an ex-employee as it does to hire a brand new person. The average Fortune 500 company could save $12 million a year by actively recruiting alumni.

Suppliers of Intellectual Capital Former employees can be great sources of ideas and intelligence, helping their old companies to stay abreast of new trends, technologies and even investment opportunities.

Ambassadors, Marketers and Lobbyists Since they are perceived as insiders, former employees just as likely to influence outside opinions about an organization as current employees. They are unwitting ambassadors.

Investors When employees leave a company, they frequently hold shares of its stock.

Earning that old cliche:  a seat at the table.  Marshall Goldsmith

Local Business?  Find Local Talent!  Recruiting Front Lines

Pass the ball!  Encouraging team work in challenging times. Tammy Erickson