Wow, it's been a month since I last blogged. Amazing how time flies.

Recently, watching the World Cup, I was inspired by something that was said from one of the commentators. He said something along the lines of "It's just as important to work hard when you don't have the ball as it does when you have it."

I translated that to my world, and no, I'm not that sporty any more, although I kind of resemble the ball.

What this said to me is that the right activity is king. You need to have activity. During the GFC (you know, those times that won't be discussed again) my team and I did not have much in the way of open requirements, our company was pretty full of people, and attrition was at an all time low. What does a Recruitment team do? We had no resumes coming in, we had no advertisements on any job boards.

Well, we worked. We knew that we were either on the swing or the roundabout, and that things change. We also knew that the speed in which things change had traditionally caught us off guard and behind the eight ball, causing the business pain due to lack of people. We spoke to people, we put people through our process with the expectation being that when things turned around, we would call them straight away. In short we talent pooled, and we talent pooled hard.

Talent pooling was a tough idea to sell to my team. There was resistance. In house Recruitment teams don't do that. "It's too agency" they said, "we're wasting people's time" they said, "It's not honest" they said. It's interesting, I rarely use the "because I said so" card at work. But I did for this. I explained that as long as we open and honest, explained to people what we were doing and why, that it would be fine, people would be fine with it, and if they weren't, then we move onto the next one.

Begrudgingly, they went along with it. And I went into sell it to Management mode.

Then after a while, the expected happened. Our market turned.

Picture this. Here's me sitting quietly at my desk when the business (figuratively) ran up to my desk panting. "Dan, Dan, we need your help. The market has turned, we are in dire need of people. And guess what? We need them now, or yesterday if possible. Please fire up that Recruitment machine and get things happening please." I turned to my team, who produced a print out of all the people, and skillsets we had ready to sign, and asked "which ones do you want?" The smile and disbelief was priceless. And PROOF, that work done without the ball, pays off when you get it back, you'll simply be in a better position!

Views: 130

Comment by Dan Hunter on July 29, 2010 at 11:13am
That's quite possibly the best piece of advice i've heard in recruitment.
Comment by Dan Nuroo on July 29, 2010 at 8:01pm
Thanks Dan, appreciate the feedback
Comment by Rebecca B. Sargeant on July 29, 2010 at 10:18pm
Dan GREAT blog!

Recessions are the best times to build a database of GREAT candidates. Recruiters ALWAYS forget these people WILL disappear back into the ranks of the employed and it would be so much easier to find them from an old resume than try to chase them down later.

I have placed MORE people than I can count from a 3 to 5 year old resumes.

Make hay while you can grab every resume you can!!!
Comment by Susan J Wojtkowski on July 30, 2010 at 10:28am
Terrific article and a great reminder that building a pipeline is THE critical activity when job orders are slow! Thanks for sharing!
Comment by Sandra McCartt on July 30, 2010 at 2:15pm
Dan,
Great reminder to all of us who "let down" building inventory. The first rule of supply and demand is to have the supply when the demand comes. Can't sell anything if the shelves are empty no matter how much the customer wants to buy.
Comment by Todd Kmiec on July 31, 2010 at 6:59am
Dan, I know it won't be discussed, but what is GFC? I think I have the GF part, but maybe not.
Comment by Dan Hunter on July 31, 2010 at 10:44am
Hi Todd i think it means Global Financial Crisis
Comment by Dan Nuroo on August 4, 2010 at 11:45pm
Sorry Todd, didn't see your comment.. thanks Dan for clarifying... you're right :)

Comment

You need to be a member of RecruitingBlogs to add comments!

Join RecruitingBlogs

Subscribe

All the recruiting news you see here, delivered straight to your inbox.

Just enter your e-mail address below

Webinar

RecruitingBlogs on Twitter

© 2024   All Rights Reserved   Powered by

Badges  |  Report an Issue  |  Privacy Policy  |  Terms of Service