Tip of the Day: Recession-proof your recruiting process

July 1st, 2008, 1:00 am · 1 Comment · posted by Jan Norman, small-business columnist

Today’s tip is from Kim Shepherd, chief executive of Decision Toolbox, an Irvine recruiting technology company.

A recession is a great time to recruit new workers. Forward-thinking businesses capitalize on the talent that unexpectedly is out of work. The company can build future teams that will help reach long-term growth targets once the economy inevitably turns around.

To recession-proof recruitment, companies need to be prepared for each extreme of the job market spectrum: having more job openings than candidates and having no openings but many good candidates.

For the past three years, it has been in a job rich/candidate poor environment in which the hiring company needs:

An aggressive plan to find talent that isn’t actively looking for work and a compelling description of the opportunity
A high-touch screening process that courts candidates with friendly, professional and timely communications
Streamlined interview and offer processes, enabling, for example, same-day offers for key candidates

On the other hand, if a downturn does take hold and suddenly all of those jobs dry up, the pendulum swings to a job poor/candidate rich environment, and a different set of recruiting rules:

Meticulously crafted marketing messages that not only attract qualified applicants, but turn away candidates who are not a fit
Investment in technology to facilitate the rapid screening/ranking of a large volume of resumes
Improving the experience that every candidate has so that no application falls into a black hole, never receiving an acknowledgement.

If you have a tip, strategy or resource to help small businesses, click here to send it to me. If I use it, I’ll give you credit and link to your Web site.

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stunt.ed says:

July 2, 2008 at 5:35 pm

Great points here, Jan, and I think a lot of companies are having a hard time powering through the candidate-poor landscape. I think the internet is partially to blame, since everyone and their mother is now working for a search engine or search engine marketing or search engine marketing design company…

But, the cause here becomes the cure. The internet’s communities, especially places like myspace and facebook, are great places to meet and forge relationships with potential candidates. My current hiring manager has his last two IT support guys on social networks. I don’t know how he finds these people, but he’s into the whole Halo thing.

Also, I think the best way to recession-proof your recruiting process is to just use a really good — and online — recruiting resource to do your hiring. I’ve also been using a website, the recruiting marketplace Dayak, to fill some current vacancies. These websites have a smart business model; managers have more control over their fees so despite the recession recruiting stays affordable. Plus, you connect with a network of recruiters rather than a single one, tripling or quadrupling your chances of finding a decent hire amidst what has been slim pickins.

Where will these recruiters be after the pendulum swings back? Oh, we’ll still need ‘em. To sift through the hordes of brilliant kids who desperately want jobs!

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