Analytics Driving New Definition of “Best of Breed”

Define “Best of Breed.” That’s rhetorical, but think about it because it illustrates a point about the direction of HR software that was part of the “Great Technology Debate” at HR Tech this morning.

It wasn’t among the questions posed to debaters Jason Averbrook, CEO at Knowledge Infusion, and Gartner’s Managing VP Jim Holincheck, though it lurked behind their generally affable agreement on most of the talent management issues that arose during their time on stage.

For instance, when show co-chair and debate moderator Bill Kutik asked about the meaning of strategic human capital management, and, later, about just what workforce planning is, there wasn’t much debate.

The former is the linkage of employees, their skills, training, performance, management, compensation, and deployment directly to the business goals and needs of the enterprise. As Holincheck said, it is “more than talent management,” and as both agreed, it is well more than the mere automation of HR functions.

Workforce planning was a little more complicated.

Distilling what the two said, workforce planning is the collection and analysis of human capital metrics to produce actionable plans positively impacting the performance of the enterprise.

What happens, though, when you have multiple best-of-breed systems from different vendors? There’s lots of data being collected, but the first obstacle to using it is integrating it.

Holincheck observed that 30 percent of his firms did no core HR integration. One problem, one big problem, is, he said, that “HR is still siloed.”

Averbrook echoed the silo comment, pointing out that talent management and workforce planning is “measured by what value it brings.” The implication being that without stitching together all the data and linking it to business talent management is, if not useless for business planning, certainly of limited value.

It was at this point that the differing views of best of breed began to emerge. While neither of them articulated it quite this way, best of breed can be decided component by component. That’s pretty much what we have been doing for years.

Makes sense, no? If you’re going to buy a talent acquisition system, you want the best of breed. Or at least the best you can afford. Same for onboarding. Ditto for performance management, and so on.

The problem with that approach, as countless employers have discovered, is as Averbrook energetically observed: “Is there a way of pulling all this data together?”

“Do you have the IT support to go with a bifurcated approach? The vendors aren’t going to string it together for you.”

Another way of looking at best of breed is holistically. Even if each piece may not be the Rolls Royce in its field, does a vendor’s complete talent management suite do what you need it to do effectively, smoothly, efficiently, and work in a way that makes it easy for people to use? Then for you, that may be the best of breed.

The HR tech vendors have been sensing the shift to product suites for the last few years. It’s one reason why so many acquisitions and partnerships have been happening.

Not an hour after the Great Debate ended, I was talking with Terrence McCrossan, division VP marketing and strategy for ADP. We were talking about the growing HR software line from ADP and the morning’s debate.

“Convergence there,” he said, referring to the issue of suite vs. best of breed, “is a big one.” Customers are looking more and more, he agreed, to comprehensive solutions for all the reasons Averbrook cited.

None of this means second rate is acceptable. And the larger employers with the IT and financial resources to make things work together, will probably still take the component approach. However, it does mean we’re taking a broader view of what it means to be  “best of breed.”

Once you have the data, however, you compile it. Then what do you do with it? Both debaters agreed that most of us are still in the early stages of making best use of the information the systems now give us.

One more observation from the debate: How do you introduce the social collaboration tools to your enterprise?

Averbrook counseled HR to “take the lead,” and not leave it to other departments or IT. “Start with it,” rather than add it incrementally to the work process.

Holincheck didn’t disagree with HR being involved, but he cautioned an incremental approach. Go slow. Let the use of social tools grow virally.

“I think it has to be part of the (TM) strategy, but I don’t think it has to be first.”

Form I-9 Fines for Abercrombie & Fitch Top 1 Million

In a press release issued this week, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced it reached a $1,047,110 fine settlement agreement with Abercrombie & Fitch for numerous deficiencies in the company’s electronic Form I-9 system. The settlement was reached as a result of an ICE audit in November 2008 of Abercrombie & Fitch’s retail stores in Michigan.

The Form I-9 audit found problems with the company’s electronic I-9 system, causing ICE to question the integrity and validity of the company’s I-9 forms. ICE reported that the investigation found no evidence the company knowingly hired any undocumented workers yet the negotiated fine settlement totaled over $1,000,000!

Form I-9 Compliance – Know Your Responsibility

Every employer should take note that an ICE investigation is not necessarily about finding undocumented workers…it is about checking the employer’s compliance with the law.  Failure to follow the proper I-9 process will result in large fines – just ask Abercrombie & Fitch.

As in the case of Abercrombie & Fitch, many employers are choosing to use an “in-house” solution or some I-9 application that comes in a “bundle” with various HR on-boarding software systems.  Many of these systems lack important security and audit functionality.  It is important to realize ICE will hold employers accountable for the requirements for record keeping and technical safeguards as laid out in the 2006 interim final regulations, so choosing the right electronic solution can mean the difference between compliance and large penalties.

Although an employer’s intent may be to comply with Form I-9 requirements, the burden is clearly on the employer to insure whatever system is used produces I-9s that are secure, accurate, complete, and accessible in the event of an ICE inspection. If the electronic completion product does not meet the standard as set forth in the Interim Rule, ICE can invalidate the Form I-9’s and fine the employer as though the forms were never completed.

What to look for when shopping for an electronic Form I-9 solution

1.  A system that completes all field as though it were a paper form

• All Section 1 fields
• Employee Attestation
• Employee Electronic Signature
• All Section 2 fields
• All document information including Title, Issuing Auth, Doc #, and Expiration Date
• Employer Attestation including hire date
• Employer Electronic Signature

2.  Choose the right vendor – ask the right questions

• Does the vendor have experienced immigration attorneys on staff to assist in design and updates to the system?
• What guarantee does the vendor contract provide?
• Can the vendor provide client references that will attest to the vendor’s ability to support the product, release accurate timely updates, and keep data secure?

While electronic I-9 systems have many features and options, selecting the right solution demands careful planning and appropriate due diligence.  And as always, Buyer Beware! – price should not be the only consideration when selecting the appropriate vendor for your electronic Form I-9 completion and storage.

Drink Up in Honor of Coffee Day

When you lift that first cup o’ Joe this morning, give thanks to Kaldi the Ethiopian goat herder who made graveyard shifts possible. Without his accidental discovery centuries ago, 43 per cent of your colleagues at work would be less productive.

Pause for a moment to take in the heady aroma of furans, pyrazines, carbonyl, and alicycliin compounds, and the other ingredients that give coffee its distinctive aroma. Then drink up, and just because it’s National Coffee Day, have a cup more than the statistical average of 3.1.

You’ll have plenty of company. The National Coffee Association says 56 percent of Americans drink at least one cup a day.

If you have a donut with that coffee, make it a Dunkin’ Donuts in recognition of the company’s work with CareerBuilder to unearth the coffee drinking practices of America’s workforce. Without its survey, how would you know that 40 percent of American workers aged 18 to 24 say they can’t concentrate as well without coffee. Or that 43 percent of  18 to 34 year-old workers have lower energy without that cup of coffee.

What types of workers most need coffee? Nurses, physicians, hotel workers, designers/architects, and insurance and financial sales people. The survey has 12 occupations listed.

So recruiters, especially those of you in healthcare, don’t neglect the coffee bene when talking company culture. Armed with this survey, and the finding from the National Coffee Association that recession or not, gourmet coffee consumption is on the rise, you might also use that seat at the table to pitch broadening the choices in the breakroom. Look what free coffee did for Starbucks.

Background Checking … Using Social Media

Employee referrals and social media have begun to blend together. Could background checks and social media be next?

A new company called “Social Intelligence” says it’ll “track the worldwide network of social media, including Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, LinkedIn, individual blogs, and thousands of other sources.”

Social Intelligence will, within 24-48 hours, produce a report on a job candidate using both automation as well as humans, the latter there to make sure there aren’t “false positives.” It says it will weed out “protected class” information it finds, such as race and religion. The company is also offering a version to monitor what existing employees are up to.

As far as the hiring version, a screenshot, which you can click on to enlarge, shows that the employee profile screens for such things as: ”Gangs,” “Drugs/drug lingo,” “demonstrating potentially violent behavior,” and “poor judgment” — something we could all agree can be found in ample supply on social media.

I asked the company’s CEO, Max Drucker, whether this judgment thing is kind of subjective. “We err on the side of not flagging something,” he says, adding that “serious red-flag issues” are what they’re really looking for. He also notes that the firm has three people review information before the profile’s done. So, “Todd beat Sean in the 600-meter dash” shouldn’t show up as a Todd-beats-people flag. I hope.

Nick Fishman, the co-founder of EmployeeScreenIQ, doesn’t envision his or other similar companies going down the social-media background-checking road. “Not only are they not now, but I don’t foresee getting into it in the future,” he says. “It’s a hornet’s nest.” Awaiting employers in that nest, he says, are FCRA regulations and EEO rules.

But Drucker, from Social Intelligence, says that “what we do is protect the employee from discrimination, and protect the employer from allegations of discrimination.” He notes that “if the employer is freaked out by the risks” of background checks and skips them, then they may end up liable for being negligent in the hiring process.

Robert Pickell, who’s the senior vice president of customer solutions at HireRight, says that he expects to see a lawsuit like that before long: a workplace violence or similar episode will happen, and someone will argue that the employer should have found information on social media indicating that the employee was dangerous.

HireRight has been talking to customers about the social-media-background-checking convergence for three or four years. The company has yet to plunge into it, though, saying there just isn’t demand, and the pitfalls are too great.

In the comment section, I’d love to hear your thoughts on all this.

Live Stream Information for #SourceCon

Starting today at noon Eastern, the sourcing world will turn its attention to Washington, D.C. as SourceCon kicks off from the International Spy Museum. I don’t think anyone can argue that there is a more fitting venue at which to host the premier sourcing event than the spy museum.

If you can’t make it in person, you can still catch much of the great content by watching the live stream carried here on the ERE.net homepage or at www.sourcecon.com.

Things will get kicked off at noon Eastern on Tuesday, September 28th and will continue on Wednesday starting at 8:45 a.m. Eastern. You can find the full schedule of sessions here.

You can watch the stream online right here on ERE.net, or you can watch on the SourceCon homepage, participate in the live chat, and follow the event on Twitter using the #SourceCon hashtag. Just click the ‘play’ button on the uStream box and you are all set!

---

About SourceCon 2010

Led by our chairperson Eric Jaquith, this year’s speaker lineup includes sourcing experts such as:

• Glen Cathey
• Gary Conway
• Jeff Eveler
• Chris Gould
• Kristin Kalscheur
• Earl Mann
• Shannon Myers
• Michael Notaro
• Tim O’Connor
• Maureen Sharib
• Shally Steckerl

You can read more about all of the speakers and what they will be talking about on the Agenda page.

Sodexo Starts From Scratch With New Recruiting Technology System

Foodservice giant Sodexo has gone live with what its talent acquisition VP Arie Ball calls an “absolutely huge” implementation of a recruiting system to manage candidates, resumes, and interviews, including internal employees, external employees, and alumni.

Though Ball admits any company would say this, Sodexo, she says, is highly focused on talent. Indeed, that’s what increases curiosity about Sodexo’s ATS selection process and all else the company does with human resources: the outfit has won multiple awards for human resources and recruiting, including the ERE Recruiting Excellence Award for the recruiting department of the year in 2010.

“This is a big deal for us,” Ball says. “We’re in a growth mode. We need to have the right tools. Our ATS is kind of like the plumbing in the house.”

The plumbing wasn’t broken, but it was aging. Sodexo had tinkered so much with its Kenexa system, which as of this year was nearly 10 years old, that it didn’t have easy access to Kenexa’s system upgrades. “Because of the tremendous degree of customization as technology evolved,” Ball says, “we were still working with old technology. We knew we wanted to do something different. We wanted to start from scratch.”

In 2007, Sodexo put in a three year-plan that would ultimately result in a new technology system for its 59-person recruiting team. In 2008, it sent out an approximately 28-page Request for Information to eight vendors.

A very structured scoring process was used to narrow down the vendor list to five. At the end of 2008, those five companies were sent a Request for Proposal. That document began with a template from the Recruiting Roundtable (now called CLC Recruiting) that was modified by Sodexo’s IT experts and others.

Sodexo narrowed that list of five to three companies, with two the clear leaders. Recruiters, procurement employees, the legal department, human resources professionals, and others watched demos of the products. Not everyone – not legal, for example – had voting power. HRchitect, a consultancy, was brought in to help with the final decision.

Icims had very heavy support among the recruiters in particular on the selection team, and was the preliminary winner. Selecting it wasn’t the last step, however. Ball had to convince an IT governance committee that this purchase was necessary. The committee, which included the CFO and CIO of North America, only met certain times. A year ago, they gave approval.

iCIMS seemed to have the customer service record that Sodexo liked. It appeared easier to use than some of the other systems, with what the demo-watchers felt was a good user interface, and search capabilities. The reference checks Sodexo conducted went well. The system also was able to provide candidates a similar look and feel as they got on the Sodexo career site (a challenge I wrote about in more detail in the Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership recently; often, fancy career websites lose their mojo when you get to the part of the site where you apply for a job or search for one).

Cathy Barton, a critical player in this process, said that the Kenexa customization had “backed us into a corner” (not due to a fault of Kenexa’s, she notes) and that iCIMS would give them flexibility to change as time went on. Barton is a director of talent administration, managing back-of-the-house functions like recruiting systems and metrics tracking.

Other key players, by the way, included Sherie Valderrama, handling communications and change management, and Anthony Scarpino, handling the branding in the various portals (internal, external, alumni).

Long and Winding Road

Sodexo chose the system last fall, and just went live this August. So, it took a bit less than a year to get it all done.

The first three months were centered around figuring out all the requirements of the system, such as how the reporting hierarchy would work. And the company found that as more and more areas were affected by the implementation, it became a challenge to keep other day-to-day work going on as normal. It was not only installing a recruiting system for candidate management, but also moving away from the “bolt-on” products for interview management and scheduling it had been using, and toward third-party systems. So this wasn’t about moving from “Kenexa to iCIMS” but rather “Kenexa to iCIMS and others.”

Sodexo also has three different portals (something that affects the pricing of its iCIMS system). These are for internal candidates, external candidates, and alumni. Sometimes jobs are posted just for internal candidates; other times just for internal candidates and external candidates; and so on, for other combinations. The messaging a candidate receives changes depending on whether they are internal, external, or alumni.

Anyhow, recruiters who were working on the implementation had some of their requisition workload reduced. Cathy Barton also got relief from some of her responsibilities handling competency interview management.

There were a ton of moving parts to manage during that time, and a steering committee of Ball, Barton, HRMS and finance representatives, as well as Dawn Atwood, met monthly to handle any major decisions that needed to be made. Atwood is a project manager who’d worked on other projects, like payroll, and was brought on to do this for about a year and a half.

The timeline of the system’s rollout went roughly like this: On July 3, Sodexo implemented a blackout period for a couple of weeks, with no new jobs posted. (“Since not a lot happens” the week of July 4, Ball says.) Ball says that it took “an incredible amount of communication” to handle that period. Heavy training on the new system happened around July 12, for all recruiters. On July 19, the iCIMS system was launched at the same time as the Kenexa system was still in use.

On August 6, the old system went dark. Data was migrated to the new system, which was no small potatoes. Sodexo moved over many employee profiles, as well as information related to the interview process. Barton notes that they didn’t want people to have to sit through a 45-minute interview again, just because the information was lost in transition.

The new system launched on its own August 24.

“Recruiters are very pumped about it,” Ball says. “But it’s a lot to learn all at once. And you can’t postpone this and learn it next week.” What she means is the system is part of everyday work, not an extra tool.

Sodexo has been doing some major training on the new system. As the launch approached, recruiters were given tips and “pre-training”; they were provided with things like “top 10 reasons you will like the new system” and were taught the new lingo that goes with it. Hiring managers have been watching 60-minute webinars, and for HR partners 90-minute webinars, on the new system. Ball says having recruiters teach recruiters was critical. Webinars, particular surrounding the most frequently asked questions, continue.

With the old Kenexa system, Sodexo couldn’t tell when a candidate dropped out of the process — only that they dropped off. Now it can tell at what point the candidate bailed, something Ball feels should allow it to tweak the system improve drop-off rates.

Ball didn’t add in any headcount savings with the new system. In other words, Sodexo doesn’t plan on cutting recruiters because of it. But, she feels recruiters will be more effective, with fewer administrative tasks and more time to focus on candidates and hiring managers.

Sodexo will be working with iCIMS to see if the system can accommodate the various ways social media is changing the management of candidates. As an example, Sodexo would like to have only the jobs individual recruiters are working on to be fed to their Facebook pages.

Also, it’d like its Softscape system for succession planning, and its background checking system, to interface with this new talent acquisition system. It might add the iCIMS onboarding system eventually, too.

This raises the question of why Sodexo didn’t go with one company to handle all HR processes. It thought about this, but in the end wanted to find the best recruiting system for its hiring needs, and not the company that could do everything from recruiting to payroll. “A lot of companies do all of it,” Ball says, but outside of their area of expertise, “”they’re not as good at the other stuff.”

For now, Ball, Barton, and team are happy to have most of this out of the way. “It was absolutely huge,” Ball says. “So many details, and the devil was in the details.”

Just Say No

Sodexo does a better job than most at keeping in touch with job candidates, and letting those who don’t make the cut know they didn’t. It sends out, for instance, a newsletter to candidates in its pipeline, featuring jobs and career articles about the food and nutrition field.

I applied for a senior vice president of operations job September 17. It asked me to upload a resume. I didn’t have one, and there wasn’t have an easy way around it, so I loaded up a Word document with some random verbiage just to progress through the system and become part of Sodexo’s “talent community.” Regarding this resume requirement, Barton and Ball say, without a lot of specifics, that they’re working on it. They’re looking at some sort of system changes that would make it more flexible and allow people to upload some other format of resume.

I received an email back that read: “Sodexo USA Careers – Welcome to the Talent Community! 
You have been added to the Sodexo talent community, which will help keep you notified of when great opportunities are available that match your interest.”

Barton says that this is one of 100 different emails that Barton says Sodexo now sends candidates.

I also got this email:

Dear Todd,

Thank you for your interest in career opportunities with Sodexo. The success of our organization begins with our employees looking for career growth and development opportunities.

We have received your application for position 2847, Senior Vice President – Operations and will be reviewing your qualifications. We will contact you as soon as possible by phone or e-mail to provide an update regarding your status. In the meantime, please click on the link to learn more about our Hiring Process.

We encourage you to continue to visit our Career Center at http://external-careers-sodexo.icims.com/ where we post new and exciting positions every day. You may search for open positions, create a Job Agent, review and update your profile or check your status for jobs to which you’ve applied at any time.

Diversity and inclusion, sustainability, wellness and fighting hunger are fundamental to Sodexo’s commitment to making every day a better day for us all. We are known throughout our industry as a top employer of talented individuals, and are proud of our track record in providing a highly rewarding work environment, with opportunities for professional and personal development, and career growth.

Again, thank you for your interest in Sodexo.

Sincerely,

Sodexo Talent Acquisition

This was on September 17. That email came with a job search widget, courtesy of Jobs2web and pictured at the top of this article, for me to put on my computer and keep up with future job openings.

On September 21, I got a rejection that went like this:

Thank you for posting your resume to the Senior Vice President – Operations position – (2847). It has been determined that you will not be forwarded for further consideration of this position.

We encourage you to continue to visit our Career Center where we post new and exciting positions every day. You may also create a Job Agent so that we can e-mail to you newly posted positions that match your pre-set search criteria or review and update your profile to ensure that you do not miss new opportunities in your area of interest.

Again, thank you for your interest.

Sincerely,

Sodexo Talent Acquisition

The fact that Sodexo said “no” to me was nice, as it provides the closure that candidates wish they got from many companies. So I’m now in its talent community, which on the back end means I’m in its new talent acquisition system, one that Ball says will make life easier for the 300,000 annual Sodexo job candidates, as well as the recruiters who sell them on jobs and the managers who hire them.

The Future of College Recruiting Will Be Dominated by Market Research (Part 2 of 2)

In part one of this two part series I indicated that now is an opportune time to evaluate new strategies and tools with regard to college recruiting. Leading talent functions in corporations around the globe are migrating their approach to college recruiting away from being a game of chance to a more serious function that embraces cutting-edge marketing and sales tactics designed to deliver highly targeted students.

Establishing a science-based college recruiting program requires using market research to more thoroughly understand your recruiting target and to test time-honored assumptions that have guided efforts in years past.

This was the topic tackled in part one of this series. Here, I’d like to explore using market research to empower direct sourcing (researching labor pools to identify target talent and reaching out to said talent prior to them submitting an application).

Steps of the Market Research Model Applied to Direct Sourcing

Use referrals to identify the very best — Referrals routinely produce the highest quality candidates and hires. For college recruiting, special programs can be established to reach out to faculty, staff, students, teaching assistants, alumni, and the references of previous top hires. When hires are made, be sure to personally thank those who made the referral. Over time, narrow down the list of possible program participants to focus on those who have a successful track record of identifying the top students.

Identify where you can view their qualifications — Direct sourcing requires that you not only be able to identify potential members of a labor pool, but also establish some knowledge of their qualifications. Great universities (and even mediocre ones) often require students to collaborate on projects and in some disciplines publish their work. Use your market research efforts to identify where students share, collaborate, and publish their work so that you can mine such sites to evaluate talent prior to making contact. Typical channels include social networking profiles, status updates, student websites, and university library archives. To find work published on publicly accessible servers, use Boolean searches that include target universities and knowledge domain-specific language. Google Scholar indexes a number of information sources including student theses, online project repositories, and professional society publications.

Search “lists” that are likely to include the only the names of likely top prospects — Not all students will have work published in such a way that it can be discovered, so you will also have to rely on information that is indicative of someone being a top student. Lists that identify honor society members, grant project members, faculty sponsored association leaders, case competition winners, etc., are a great place to start. While some lists will be available for all schools, consider using your market research process to identify local lists that may not be available online. Garnering access to some lists may require that you court friendly staff members, grad assistants, faculty, or former interns.

Tap the networks of identified students — No matter how exhaustive your research efforts, it is still highly probable that a number of exceptional students would go undiscovered. For instance, relying solely on research that looks at academic results may overlook the student who is a workhorse on team projects but struggles with individual assignments. When initial contact of directly sourced students proceeds, ask prospects:

• Who else is very good in your class that often gets overlooked?
• Which students look good on paper, but don’t fare well on projects?
• If you were assembling a dream team comprised of your fellow students to accomplish _______, who would you want on the project and what role(s) would each person play.

Learn alternative approaches to name identification — Every day the world of social media introduces a new way to find and assess exceptional talent. Many social networking tools establish a regional following long before they go national/international. When conducting market research, be sure to identify the latest tools and online communities that target students are using. Each recruiting season, revisit your list of sources, dropping those that are declining in value and adding others to evaluate.

Evaluating the Effectiveness of Your Effort

You can’t improve what you don’t measure, so every year you need to evaluate the effectiveness of your efforts and look at the landscape of known talent competitors to see how you align. While MGM Mirage and Colgate may not compete directly as businesses, when it comes to courting top students, they are certainly competitors, so toss your narrowly defined scope of competitors out the window. Things to look at include:

• The competitive landscape — Recruiting, like marketing, is not executed in isolation. You need to look at what other organizations are courting students from the same pools you are, and how their approach aligns with yours. Whose process is more responsive not just to students’ needs, but also their wants?
• Identify dropout factors — When students you court opt out of your process, find out why. Is it something specific about the organization, the job, the individuals involved, etc? If the issue is something that can’t be resolved without significant organizational change, don’t lie and say that it can, but keep in mind that to prevent future failure the issue may need to be addressed.
• Identify what worked — No organization can do everything possible well. Ask students that advance the furthest (including those hired) what elements of your approach were the most influential, and invest more in those elements next term. Also ask what didn’t influence them or did so negatively and drop those elements.

Final Thoughts

You cannot be a great angler without fully understanding the interests and the feeding habits of fish. Intuition or luck can result in occasional success, but predictable performance requires scientific approaches.

Rapid change is everywhere, and universities are not exempt. As business processes become more refined and effective, recruiting practitioners and leaders must be willing to adopt their successful tools and methods to what they do, CRM being just one of many business processes relevant in recruiting. The alternatives to changing are well understood and include declinging performance, declining budgets, declining perception of value/relevance, and ultimately becoming obsolete.

High Tech Firms Settle No-Poaching Case

Six leading high-tech companies have agreed to settle an antitrust claim arising from an arrangement among them not to poach each other’s employees.

The U.S. Department of Justice announced the settlement in Washington a few hours ago and simultaneously filed a civil antitrust action. Brought against Adobe Systems, Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit, and Pixar, the lawsuit details the alleged hiring arrangements. Accompanying the civil complaint was a proposed settlement in which the firms agree not to engage in anti-competitive no solicitation agreements.

The DOJ says the settlement “prohibits the companies from entering, maintaining or enforcing any agreement that in any way prevents any person from soliciting, cold calling, recruiting, or otherwise competing for employees.   The companies will also implement compliance measures tailored to these practices.”

The investigation was launched last year into recruiting collusion among a number of firms, including Google and Apple. The arrangement between the two firms, the Justice Department now says, began “no later” than 2006 when the two companies instructed recruiters not to cold call the other’s employees.

Similar arrangements existed, the Justice Department charged in the suit, among the other four companies. In a press statement the department issued, it said that in addition to the Google-Apple agreement, similar no-poaching agreements existed between Apple and Adobe, Apple and Pixar, Google and Intel and with Intuit.

Google didn’t issue a formal statement. But in a blog post, Amy Lambert, Associate General Counsel, Employment, said the company decided in 2005 not to “cold call employees at a few of our partner companies. Our policy only impacted cold calling, and we continued to recruit from these companies through LinkedIn, job fairs, employee referrals, or when candidates approached Google directly. In fact, we hired hundreds of employees from the companies involved during this time period.

“While there’s no evidence that our policy hindered hiring or affected wages, we abandoned our “no cold calling” policy in late 2009 once the Justice Department raised concerns, and are happy to continue with this approach as part of this settlement.”

However, the Justice Department, in its public statement on the settlement, said the recruiting arrangements among the companies “eliminated a significant form of competition to attract highly skilled employees, and overall diminished competition to the detriment of affected employees who were likely deprived of competitively important information and access to better job opportunities.”

The Associated Press reported that Adobe, Intel, and Intuit  issued statements denying they did anything wrong. Each said they were settling to put an end to the matter. Neither Apple nor Pixar, a company once run by Apple founder and current CEO, Steve Jobs, issued statements.

Succession Planning for the Long Term

This week we were joined by Goerge Bradt of PrimeGenesis to discuss long term succession planning initiatives. Learn how to create a strategy that will prepare your employees to smoothly transition from role to role, from the onboarding process all the way to leadership positions.

For more podcasts, webinars, and articles on recruiting be sure to check out ERE.net!

Economic Index Improves, But Eyes Are On Jobless Claims Rise

For as dreary as August was for the weather and investors, it turns out the month may have been a bit better than expected. The Conference Board’s Index of Leading Economic Indicators rose .3 percent, which was more than the .1 percent a Bloomberg survey of economists expected.

But as we’ve come to expect from the economic news, this morning’s good news was tempered by an unexpected rise in unemployment claims. The Labor Department said this morning that claims rose by 12,000 last week to 465,000. It was the first rise in five weeks.

The market, more spooked by the unemployment rise — and worries about the European economy — than encouraged by The Conference Board’s rising index, reacted by closing down for the day.

In another economic announcement from the government, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that there were 1,546 mass layoffs in August, which resulted in 150,192 workers losing their jobs. That was an increase in almost 6,500 more laid-off workers over July.

The layoff numbers themselves don’t say a whole lot. Since January, the numbers have hovered between 140,000 and 150,000, though they have been as high as 200,870 (April) and as low as 135,789 (May). Compare them to early 2007 when 120,000 to 130,000 was more the norm, and you can see the grip the recession still holds.

While September’s numbers won’t be out for a month, Layoff Watch is full of job-cut announcements, including 1,700 announced by FedEx earlier this week and 3,000 announced Wednesday by Abbott Laboratories. They don’t come anywhere near the BLS numbers because the Bureau considers it a layoff whenever 50 or more workers file an unemployment claim against a company in any five-week period. Many companies don’t announce layoffs that small; some don’t announce layoffs at all.

Challenger, Gray & Christmas, meanwhile,  sent out a note this morning pointing out some half-full economic news. The global outplacement firm noted that Macy’s says it will hire 65,000 seasonal holiday workers, expecting sales to grow 3-3.5 percent over last year.  Toys R Us earlier said it expected to hire 10,000 temporary workers for the holiday season.

Predicts Challenger: “Hiring will increase this holiday season over last year, due to two consecutive months of sales gains in addition to a 65 percent decline in retail-sector job cut announcements since 2009.”

Next Page »