Best Recruitment Practices for 2008

8/6/2019 Best Recruitment Practices for 2008

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while quantitative measures focus on enumerating talent acquisition,development, and retention activities that drive diversity, includingpromotions).

o Ninety-one percent of candidate slates included interviews with diverseindividuals.

oThe scorecard tied 10-15% of the manager bonus to diversity scorecardoutcomes, and it embedded diversity in the performance appraisal, whichdetermines merit increases.

o The scorecard tied 25% of the executive bonus to diversity scorecardoutcomes.

It set diversity and inclusion as one of the company's six strategic goals. Sodexo coordinated diversity initiatives across hiring, development, promotion,

and retention. It created a recruiter incentive system that provides rewards for diversity results. Sodexo established a separate diversity sourcing strategy.

The results include a 38% increase in qualified ethnically/racially diverse candidates anda 32% increase in qualified female candidates.

Best Retention Program: AIMCO

The work done by the recruiting team at AIMCO can only be described as breathtaking.Its "dollarization" of HR results, forward-looking predictive metrics, and generalbusinesslike approach make even the iconic Google look like a has-been. I haveresearched AIMCO's approach to HR, and I find it to be the one that everyone shouldemulate.

Some elements of its approach to retention that demonstrate its advanced thinking are:

The company implemented a "chargeback" model, in which internal HRservices must be competitive and effective in order to be utilized by managers.

It established an extensive analytical framework to identify and predict turnovertrends.

AIMCO correlated turnover to Controllable Operating Net Income (CNOI) inorder to demonstrate to managers that managing turnover is a significantcontributor to meeting budget goals. Related findings include:

o Properties could expect to gain an average of over $16,000 in CNOIimprovement per retained employee.

oProperties with less than 25% annualized turnover could expect 60%higher CNOI performance versus those with greater turnover.

o Salary waste alone can account for up to 3% of a property's annual CNOI.o On average, for every Community Manager who exits the company, eight

additional employees will leave that property before it normalizes itsoperations.

o Every 1% increase in retention is equivalent to over $403,000 in recruitingand training costs, salary waste, and operational performance.

~ Knowledge Increases By Sharing. So, Pass It On. ~ Vishal Nagda ~ Page 2 of 8


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It launched EE surveys at all stages of the employee lifecycle in order to collectinformation on turnover drivers and to drive predictive modeling efforts.

For some jobs, it has reduced the time-to-fill by 10 days down to an amazing 20-day period by anticipating future needs and starting the recruitment process beforean actual requisition is issued.

AIMCO created an online card game for employees that assesses what isimportant to them individually and determines whether or not those preferencesare strengths or weaknesses of their current jobs. A report is provided at the endof the game that provides each employee with an individualized action plan todrive engagement, productivity, and retention. (This innovative approach foridentifying what motivates each individual employee in order to improve his orher productivity and retention is the best that I've seen anywhere in the world.)

It developed a retention toolkit for managers. The company integrated retention-goal planning into each manager's performance

goals. AIMCO measures turnover eight different ways, including:

oPre-productive turnover (its concept of demonstrating salary waste whenlosing an employee is an excellent example of dollarization). Workingwith the COO, it helps determine the point in an employee's career whenhe or she begins to make a positive ROI. Individuals who leave before thatpoint cost the firm and cause salary waste.

o Short-term turnover probability (predicting who's at risk and whereturnover is likely to occur is something that few firms have evenattempted).

Most Innovative Employee Referral Program: AmTrust Bank

Clearly AmTrust Bank has demonstrated that a relatively small financial institutionheadquartered in Ohio can do some world-class work. Up to 78% of its hires come fromemployee referrals, which has allowed the bank to both reduce agency fees from 21% ofbudgeted recruiting expense down to about 3% and to avoid spending money onnewspaper ads. The bank has found that these referral hires have no negative impact ondiversity while excelling in on-the-job performance and retention.

Some compelling program features and results include:

AmTrust Bank created the LINX referral program in 2006, which deputizes allemployees to play key roles in recruiting.

Its service level agreements guarantee response to

allreferrals within threebusiness days. (I have found that responsiveness is the number one factor in

successful employer referral programs.) It correlated turnover by department to staffing concentration by source. When

ERP was revealed to produce lower turnover, it focused the sourcing strategy onreferrals, which not only saved money, but drove company-wide turnover downby 18%. (It's also important to correlate hiring sources with on-the-jobperformance in order to make your workforce more productive.)



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The company created an Employee Referral Advocate position solely dedicated tomanaging the program, which serves as the central point of contact for allemployees and referrals.

Referrals and referring employees are updated with quality feedback followingeach stage of the process. (Individual feedback to individual employees who make

weak referrals is far superior to implementing onerous program rules.) Every company employee is provided with employer referral cards. But its

program has an innovative element that randomly stops employees and asks themto produce a referral card. If they do, they are given a $50 reward for carryingthem around.

Leveraged monthly prize contests drive program participation. Total recruiting program savings total more than $500,000. AmTrust Bank established referral relationships with local diversity organizations

to drive uptick in bilingual candidates. Program introduction is embedded in new-hire orientation. Referral bonuses are paid within 30 days of a candidate starting. The standard

bonus is $500, although some hot jobs can receive up to $2,000.

Recruiting Department of the Year: Intuit

Once again, Michael McNeal has put together an outstanding team that continues toinnovate, especially in the areas of workforce planning and statistical modeling.

Highlights of his team's recent efforts include:

It created an analyst position to develop predictive models that have been up to98% accurate.

The company centralized the sourcing function with its business unit, whichaligned recruiters and program management teams with employment branding,employee referral, diversity, early-career talent pool, internal and externalnetworking, candidate experience, and Internet sourcing.

The separate Talent Acquisition Logistics team owns the post-hire, pre-starttimeline to ensure new hires transition from candidates to employees smoothly.(Its broad view of the candidate experience lifecycle is the model to follow.)

It established a talent acquisition planning model in which unit-aligned recruitershelp managers determine what type of talent will best meet their operationalneeds. During this process, managers have access to workforce informationregarding compensation, talent pools, diversity, alumni rehiring, referrals, and

internal mobility. Talent Acquisition (TA) created a customized database that they call the "Bat

Computer." Just as the Batmobile allows Batman to respond quickly and save theday, the TA "Bat Computer" has drastically increased their productivity andefficiency. The tool takes information from their Applicant Tracking System(ATS), budget forecasts and actuals, hiring forecast and trend data, and otherinformation to address business goals. This tool allows them to monitor TA



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performance, recruiter productivity, and candidate generation strategyperformance, and highlight best practices immediately.

The results are reflected in its recent employee survey, which shows that overallemployee satisfaction at Intuit is 4% higher than Sirota's best-in-class rankings. For the

seventh consecutive year, Intuit has ranked onFortune

magazine's list of "100 BestCompanies to Work For" in the U.S. Since 2005, its revenue per employee has increased.It is also spending less money to fill vacancies from voluntary and involuntary attrition.

Best College Recruiting Program: Ernst & Young

Ernst & Young (E&Y) once again demonstrates its leadership within its industry byupdating one of the largest college recruiting programs (over 5,000 hires per year). Bytreating campuses like business clients, it has produced significant results.

Highlights of recent innovations include:

Its program now touches over 300 business-school campuses in North America. It leverages former interns in their senior year as campus ambassadors. (This is a

best practice that everyone should copy.) Ernst & Young used an online video development contest to get current students

to write and produce videos starring themselves and talking about what wasimportant to them in a career in professional services. The winning video teamwon a trip with E&Y's CEO.

The company leverages a campus-centric team approach to ensure strongrelationship standards are fostered and maintained. Each campus team iscomprised of:

oA campus coordinating partner, campus recruiter, campus champion(senior manager), and a diversity champion.

o Each team is also supported by additional professionals representing linesof service, geographies, etc.

o On average, large schools have teams ranging between 15-20 coremembers.

E&Y chairman, executive board, and all vice chairs lead campus recruiting effortsby attending faculty conferences and speaking to student groups on site.

Each business unit has five strategic goals related to campus recruiting in theirbalanced scorecards; many business units have now added campus recruitinggoals into managers' personal development plans.

It established a recruiting strategy that embeds brand building into all studenttouchpoints throughout the academic lifecycle.

E&Y is the most thorough corporate user of Facebook to enable delivery oftargeted messaging to students and student groups using a channel/forum thatstudents prefer. Its policy requires that all posts made by students on Facebook areresponded to within 5 business days.

It holds numerous conferences aimed at attracting diverse college students. Intern to full-time hire conversion rate is more than 90%.



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E&Y ranked as the #3 most desirable employer among business studentsaccording to Universum and #3 onBusiness Week's "Best Places to Launch aCareer" list. It has also been named to Fortune's "Best Companies to Work For"list 10 years in a row.

It reengineered its campus careers website to support a segmented-by-invitationapplication model (students who receive an invitation to apply are redirected to acustomized online application). Highlights of its careers site include:

o It has vanity URLs for each major campus.o There is a "Picture Yourself" tool that lets students see where in E&Y

their majors and personal interests could take them, complete with realvideo interviews of people in those roles.

o The "E&Y 360" lets students see day-in-the-life scenarios of actualemployees.

o The website was rated #8 on Universum's "Most Impressive Overall"ranking of employment websites among undergraduate students.

o Its careers site now accounts for 60% of all EY.com traffic.Best Employer Brand: Ernst & Young

E&Y also won the award for the best employer brand, demonstrating once again thatorganizations with a strong heritage and conservative business standards can excel atinnovation when the business demands it.

Highlights of its approach to employment branding include:

Its brand is based on three pillars: inclusiveness, flexibility, and continuouslearning/development.

There are monthly e-mail opt-in news blasts.

Its extensive Facebook profile, group, and messaging allow students to dialoguewith one another and current E&Y employees about careers in professionalservices.

The Facebook profile is refreshed weekly with new content. There is extensive leveraging of the business press and PR to position E&Y as a

progressive employer capable of launching a phenomenal career. It built a culture campaign featuring stories of E&Y employees that replaced stale

corporate policies. The stories were chosen to emphasize the "people first" cultureelements once defined by policies.

E&Y participates in corporate recognition contests like Fortune magazine's "100Best Companies to Work For" ranking, in which E&Y is the only "Big Four"company and one of a tiny handful of companies overall to be rankedconsecutively for 10 years.

Notice its recruiting stats regarding boomerangs: 24% of all managers and seniormanagers; 40% return within one year and 29% within 1-3 years. Plus 27% ofprofessional hires come from employee referrals.

Its world-class alumni program features a dedicated website, monthly newsletter,and a series of national, regional, and local events.



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Most Effective Use of Staffing Metrics: Wipro

Around the globe, Wipro is cementing its position as one of the largest and mostsuccessful IT service and business process outsourcing companies. Once again this year,Wipro demonstrated that when it comes to building world-class business processes, its

own HR organization is not exempt. This past year, the Bangalore, India-headquarteredcompany:

Leveraged risk auditors to associate the benefit/risk of recruiting performance toits bottom line. (Risk analysis is absent from most recruiting departments'analytics.)

Leveraged in-house quality analysts proficient in Six Sigma, LEAN, and TRIZ tocontinuously monitor and establish business performance-oriented metrics.

Implemented a performance-management model that evaluates staffing functionperformance both pre- and post-hire.

Segmented staffing metrics to focus on actives, passives, seniors, and alumni.

Migrated all HR/recruiting data to an enterprise data warehouse, enablingextensive data modeling (predictive, associative, sequential, etc.). Created visual dashboards for all key stakeholders, including third-party vendors.

Best Corporate Careers Site: KPMG

KPMG is another firm that is innovating in a traditionally conservative industry. Thisyear, it focused on revamping its corporate careers site to allow anyone to explore how itseducation and personal interests relate to opportunities at KPMG.

Some highlights of its new approach include:

Employee Career Architecture allows visitors to explore career options with aninteractive "build your own career path" mapping tool. (Interactivity andpersonalization are critical factors in careers website development.)

A "matching majors" function allows college students to see what careers atKPMG leverage their majors and vice versa in order to explore what types ofcourses are required to pursue a career path that interests them at the company.

A quick poll with live results features a periodic question about candidate-jobexpectations. Visitors who participate can see the results immediately.

Its Career Journey video series profiles real KPMG employees ranging in rolesfrom interns to partners.

Weekly Web design and content refresh meetings ensure that the site content isalways fresh.

Most Strategic Use of Recruiting Technology: TruGreen

The design of this company's process demonstrates deep insight into the future ofrecruiting, in which statistics and modeling will help firms predict business problems andopportunities utilizing people-related data. When it comes to organizations demonstrating



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that HR can not only partner but contribute directly to the business, this nationallandscaping arm of Service Master leads the way.

Groundbreaking efforts taken this past year include:

It architected a Recruiting Decision Support System to enable the recruitingfunction to answer several key business strategy questions related to talent, suchas: Does the talent actually exist in all markets? Within the allocatedcompensation levels, can the talent be acquired? Will recruiting resources berequired to support regional operations?

The system enables TruGreen to proactively and scientifically assess theprobability, risks, and strategic impact that hiring will have on planned capitalexpansion and growth.

The system leverages millions of records of procured data on occupations, skills,competencies, wages, and demographics to predict using a single numerical,indexed value for the availability/scarcity of talent pools to meet growth

predictions in 229 defined expansion markets. The predictive model is used to drive all elements of a geographically-segmented

recruiting strategy.

Final Thoughts

The award recipients highlighted here deserve to be congratulated, and I would like tothank them for pushing the envelope in recruiting and HR. It should be obvious from boththe record attendance and the tone of this year's Expo that the war for talent is still goingstrong.

Everyone should also take note that the rate of innovation in recruiting is increasing andthat the one overriding trend is that recruiting is becoming more businesslike. More andmore recruiting functions are leveraging statistical modeling and heuristics to anticipateand manage future events. This trend means that more and more decisions in recruitingwill be made based on data and facts, rather than on intuition and tradition. If you'rebehind in developing advanced metrics, you will soon be non-competitive.


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Best Recruitment Practices for 2008