We've all heard the phrase "cash is king" and probably hear that today more than ever. Why? Keep in mind that this is overly general but I'm just trying to illustrate a point. In today's economy we hear a lot about companies that borrowed extensively to fuel their growth and now the underlying assets that secured those loans are worth a lot less. In extreme cases that puts those companies upside down - meaning they owe more than the collateralized assets are worth. One way for these companies to address the problem of course is to dump/sell those assets to raise cash and reduce the debt burden. And with the state of affairs as they are, most of the time those assets are being sold at a discount. In the worst case scenario the lender has foreclosed (i.e. taken control of the collateral) and the assets are fire sold at deep discounts by the banks looking to get cash back and write off the loss. Either way, those that are flush with cash are there ready to buy valuable assets being dumped at discounts.

So what does all of this have to do with CRM in Recruiting? Certainly a company's talent is a key asset and, in an attempt to reduce costs in a down economy, we've seen many companies dump large chunks of their talent in the form of layoffs, reorganizations, etc. If you were flush with open reqs you'd have the opportunity of a lifetime to hire their talent just like the opportunistic buyers of distressed debt. But many of us don't have the open reqs today to take advantage of the opportunity and our ATS isn't equipped to handle people that don't apply to a specific req. So instead of changing our recruiting strategy and reallocating our spend - albeit limited - in concert with the changing dynamics of the market, we simply chalk up the times to cost reduction, launch no new initiatives, and when hiring picks up we re-enter the playing field ready to fight the war for talent, again. However, you're missing an opportunity that 12 months ago, when you were hiring, you'd have killed for.

With a CRM strategy in place today you can seize the opportunity by sourcing and building a database of these prospects. A CRM gives you the tools to find them, engage them, and maintain a relationship with them. These relationships will put you in pole position when things turn around and you need to start hiring again.

I had lunch on Friday with Susan Burns who was formerly OVP of Employment Initiatives covering recruitment strategy, technology and marketing for Federated Dept. Stores serving both Macy's and Bloomingdale's (Susan also recently headed up staffing for Waggener Edstrom, the second largest privately held global PR agency and is now a self-employed consultant with Talent Synchronicity in Portland, OR and frequent contributor to RBC through Talent Talk Cafe). She informed me that Macy's just announced a reorganization that will eliminate 7,000 jobs and centralize all buying functions to the former Macy's East headquarters in NY. That eliminates some very talented retail people in San Francisco and Minneapolis. We both agreed that this was the perfect example of why everyone should have a CRM. Start getting these people into your CRM so you know who they are, they know who you are, you're consistently staying in contact with them, and you're ahead of the competition in recruiting them when the timing is right.

Or you can wait until all the sharks return to the waters and then dive in as frustrated as always about why you can't find good people.

For a demo of Recruiting CRM by Avature or to receive our CRM ROI calculator, email me at mike@avature.net.

Mike Johnson