APICS Atlanta Employment and Recruitment Coordinator
Article appeared in the October 1997 APICS-Atlanta newsletter
The national unemployment rate is 5% with the actual rate in Atlanta between 2 and 3%. More and more positions are going unfilled and this is negatively impacting organizations' abilities to reach their critical goals.
Human Resources departments and search firms are overwhelmed with the backlog of recruiting assignments as many of their traditional recruiting sources are proving less effective:
- Newspaper ads are drawing from a smaller and smaller pool of qualified applicants
- Top candidates are choosing from multiple competing offers
- Applicants are less willing to relocate, commute long distances, work off-shift jobs, accept positions lacking career growth, or work for questionable industries
Managers and hiring officials may have to perform more of the recruiting activities for themselves, become more effective in their use of search firms, and learn some of the less used sources to fill their open positions. Some sources to investigate are:
Employee referral incentives can create a more robust referral flow when employees receive a bonus of several hundred dollars for each referral leading to an actual hire. Our employees, as well as our managers, can be trained to always be on the lookout for the talent we are likely to need. This can pay off handsomely as a source of already "known" and "courted" candidates when the opening actually occurs.
The resume referral services of professional associations, such as APICS, NAPM, IEEE, ASQC, etc., are still found to be effective sources of talent. However, the frequency of inquiries made to our own association's resume referral service has hit an all time high at the same time as our pool of resumes is at an all time low; this is likely to be the case for the other associations as well.
Search firms are used by most companies because they can be faster while producing a higher caliber of candidates than ads and many other sources. Still, the most common approaches for using search firms can be inefficient and can waste valuable time unless you have strong communications with, and the full commitment of, the search firm. An article will appear in next month's newsletter on more effective ways to use search firms.
Job fairs can prove to be effective, particularly when searching for factory workers and for entry-level management positions. Pools of recent high school and college graduates and returning military can be attracted by highly visible newspaper ads. Job Fairs allow the efficiency of mass presentation and mass mutual evaluations.
The use of temporary employees, or interim workers, is proving to be cost effective when the added workload is the result of a project or other short-term activity. Companies with cyclical business patterns (or for some other reason) choose to carry a minimal permanent (direct) payroll, and may maintain as much as one-third or even one-half of their total workforce as temporary employees. These are either carried on their own payroll as a different category from their other workers, or are carried on the payroll of an agency. Sometimes temporaries can be found with needed special skills to perform the extra or unusual tasks, up to and including filling the office of the President for the special situation of a turnaround. Another example is an interim worker performing the day-to-day tasks, while direct employees work on a special project. This might be appropriate during an ERP system implementation where there is value retaining the employee with the project experience.
Outplacement firms are handling broader levels of outplaced employees than in earlier times, not just the top managers anymore. They are developing more effective methods to get their customer lists to potential hiring officials. They have web sites on the internet and newsletters with lists of their available clients, i.e. Lee Hecht Harrison's Resume Reserve at http://www.careerlhh.com.
The Internet should not be overlooked, even though it has not proven to be a very efficient source of employees for most of our needs. Positions in academia and IS are the most prominent exceptions. Web Sites you can use are:
It is not surprising that companies have to take a long-term view toward the problem. Some feel that freebie pens and rulers given out in junior high schools will plant the seed of company recognition. They want to expose students, who may develop into employees five or six years hence, to their company and profession.
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