What is your department’s relationship with technology? Are you a user or an owner? There’s a difference and it’s an important one. Technology has now reached a point where it controls the efficiency and effectiveness of talent acquisition and management. If you aspire to staffing best practice over the next decade, it will provide the tools you’ll need to get there. But an ownership mentality will be essential. To put it simply, if you decide to own those tools you’ll have a shot; if you decide to merely use them, you will not.

Ownership has nothing to do with whether your technology is in-house or outsourced; whether it is leased, licensed or proprietary; how much it cost; who supplied it; or to some extent even whether it’s the newest and most updated. Ownership is not restricted to companies with large staffs and budgets. Money is not the critical factor (although it does play a role). Nor is it contingent on the size of the company IT staff (actually, smaller can be an advantage). READ MORE >

KellyOCG’S Global RPO Report 2011 describes a recruiting problem and a recruiting solution that can’t seem to find each other. Here’s the problem:

• 94% of the employers surveyed planned to fill permanent positions in 2011 and 80% planned to fill temp positions. 30% in the U.S. planned to hire more than 100 employees.
   
• The positions most in demand were business operations support, administrative, mid-level execs/professionals, and senior execs/professionals.
   
• 38% were having difficulties hiring staff, especially larger companies (51% worldwide)...

READ MORE >

What would happen if you sent this email to the corner office: “Mary, I just finished a risk assessment of George being hit by a bus. We’re out $25 million. Perhaps we should discuss.”

Corner office types understand risk. Managing unexpected ‘what ifs’ is one of the things that wakes them up at 2 AM. You can send Mary books about how efficient your staffing department is and all the wonderful candidates you placed last month and never get a return message longer than: “Great, thanks, good job.” But drop the news about George on her and see what happens.

Advanced risk management is an esoteric tangle of algorithms, probability models and computer simulations, but a practical, stripped down version suitable for everyday use, based on the same basic principles, is available to every staffing department. We use it daily whenever we carry an umbrella or an extra sweater ‘just in case.’ There are three components.  READ MORE >