Fearless Recruiting In Today's Economy

The writer and historian, Michael Ignatieff, once wrote, "Living fearlessly is not the same thing as never being afraid. It’s good to be afraid occasionally. Fear is a great teacher. What’s not good is living in fear, allowing fear to define who you are. Living fearlessly means standing up to fear, taking its measure, refusing to let it shape and define your life."

I think we can all agree that there are high levels of fear in today's workplace. Employees worried about their jobs and what will happen if they get laid off. HR professionals in fear for their own positions. New graduates afraid they won't be able to find a job. Ordinary people afraid that the politicians will not be able to figure out an effective way to pull the country out of it's current economic nose dive.

So what are we to do? Ignatieff provides a hint when he says, "Fear is a great teacher...Living fearlessly means standing up to fear, taking its measure, refusing to let it shape and define your life." In other words, it is time to develop coping skills which will allow us to tackle our problems head-on and improve the chances for favorable outcomes.


Kevin Wheeler, President and Founder of Global Learning Resources, Inc., recently wrote an article entitled, Frame the Future You Want: 4 Things to Do Right Now. In it, Wheeler provided some of his suggestions as to how to cope and prepare for the future. Here are excerpts from the article:

Be Strategically Bold; Tactically Careful
The first step in dealing with the current situation is to sit down and plan out a 3-5 year strategic plan for the future of your recruiting function. Envision a new tomorrow where you can use the technology, processes, and learnings that have emerged over the past decade. Some of the technologies and tools include such things as social networks, blogs, wikis, and candidate relationship management tools. At the same time, you need to act right now with fiscal caution and show your management that you are a responsible manager. Your job is to balance today with several possible recruiting situations in the future.

Envision a New Workforce
The really best recruiting and talent leaders will sit down with management and have some open discussions about the desired workforce of the future. Every recession is an opportunity to recalibrate, learn and decide on what skills and competencies are most likely to be needed as we emerge from this recession. By anticipating needs, recruiters will have had an edge on any competition. Once you have even a blurry picture of the skills and competencies you may need, you can begin sourcing for these kinds of candidates and begin to populate a talent community with people whom you are getting to know and who are getting to know you.

Collaborate and Learn
Collaborate and learn from your peers and from experts in the field. This is a golden opportunity to attend webinars, which are mostly free, catch up on the blogs you have wanted to read but didn’t have time to, and make a few phone calls to friends, colleagues, and others you may have heard of.

Focus on Candidate Engagement
Carefully, authentically, and regularly communicate with all the best candidates you have. Experiment with tools like blogs, email, newsletters, Twitter updates – anything that might engage and stimulate the many potential candidates you should already have in your talent pools. If you neglect them or just tell them that there are no openings now, you lose a resource that you have spent lots of time and money finding and developing. Better to be honest with them, let them know exactly what your situation is, and keep them updated regularly.


Wheeler concludes his article by reminding us that economies will recover and the emerging world will be different and more challenging than ever. He urges us to use this precious resource of extra time wisely and well to frame the future we want.

Which is exactly what we are doing in our offices at MITTONMedia. On the surface, this would not appear to be the ideal time to be running a recruitment advertising firm! However, we believe in the classic axiom, "In chaos there is opportunity." By developing and refining our own coping skills, we are discovering all kinds of possibilities with employers. Some of our coping skills include:

1. Creating this blog, Recruitment That Works. Hopefully we will all learn new things along the way which will add to our knowledge base and improve skill levels in many areas.
2. Enhancing our Social Networking skills. To be completely honest, I should say improving MY social networking skills. I try to live by the rule of "always hire people who are smarter than you are." Which means I am surrounded by a wonderful staff of skilled "mentors" who enjoy opening my eyes to new possibilities. And and it has been an enjoyable experience to get "LinkedIn" and reconnected with former classmates and colleagues as well as being introduced to new business opportunities.
3. Developing new products and services designed to meet the needs of employers in the current economic client. For some employers we continue to plan and execute robust recruitment advertising programs both domestically and globally. For others it has been time to re-tool their Employer Branding and Employee Retention programs. We have also developed an anonymous online survey system to help employers gather the data they need to prepare for immediate and long-range strategic planning. There have also been numerous requests for the re-design of corporate career websites to better engage prospective applicants and the creation of customized Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) which do a better job of providing understandable data that allows for better tracking and more effective results.
4. Aligning ourselves with sister companies who do not provide the specialized services we offer and vice verse. By working together we find new opportunities and produce more complete customized solutions.
5. Collaborating with the academic community. For example, members of our staff met this week with 13 doctoral students and their professor in the University of Houston's Industrial/Organizational division of the Psychology Department. Historically there has often been a disconnect in the communication process between academics and those in the business world. In many cases instead of problem-solving together, each group continues work in isolation surrounded by their own filtration system of what is important and what is not. We hope to SHATTER that barrier in our corner of the world by collaborating with these fresh young minds and try to develop a few new strategies and tools that will help employers embrace what is waiting for them in the future workplace.

How about you? What kind coping skills are you developing and implementing in your office?