Cloud computing jobs increased by 9 2 percent in February 2012 in comparison to numbers from February 2011. And it was up 400 percent from the same time in 2010.  More than 2,400 companies posted job ads during the last quarter of 2011 and hiring demand grew 61% year-over-year. As a result hiring managers are having trouble finding workers to fill these positions. A shortage of skilled workers means demand is high for people with cloud computing experience and development skills.

The challenge in filling these jobs isn’t just that experience or training is needed in technology. Workers proficient in cloud computing need skills in managing process and knowledge of the law.  The shortages are restricted to technology companies either. Nearly one-third of the jobs are being created are non-IT positions, including marketing managers, sales managers, customer service representatives, and analysts.

A January 2012 study showed that cloud computing is a huge generator of new jobs and will continue to be a growth area. Employee growth at the cloud services companies that were studied was 5 times that of the high-tech services industry. The report concluded that companies selling cloud-based services could create as many as 427,000 jobs in the U.S. and overseas in the next 5 years.  Eleven companies added 80,000 in the U.S. in 2010 alone. Venture capital investments in cloud computing could add another 213,000,

According to Wanted Analytics, the most in-demand cloud related skills include:

1. Oracle Java
2. Linux
3. Structured Query Language (SQL)
4. UNIX
5. Software as a Service (SaaS)
6. Python Extensible Programming Language
7. Practical Extraction and Reporting Language (Perl)
8. Extensible Markup Language (XML)
9. Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)
10. JavaScript (JS)

Many employers also require certifications. The most commonly requested certifications include:

1. Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP)
2. Project Management Professional (PMP)
3. Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE)
4. Cisco Network Associate (CCNA)
5. VMWare Certified Professional (VCP)
6. Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA)
7. Microsoft Certified IT Professional (MCITP)
8. Cisco Certified Network Professional (CCNP)
9. Information Security Penetration Testing Professional (ISP)
10. Cisco CCIE Voice (CCIE)

I might also add these technical skills are just the beginning. The ability to apply the skills and knowledge is what counts. That requires the ability to communicate and collaborate, to deal with ambiguity, to adapt, to manage projects, to understand process (not just systems.

Apparently some executives aren’t only good at building companies.  Whether it’s ego, arrogance, or naiveté, many C-level folks seem to claim an advanced degree from an educational institution they’ve never set foot in.

Yahoo’s CEO Scott Thomson was the latest culprit caught for misrepresenting his credentials. Thompson claimed he held double degrees from Stonehill College, including one in computer science.  Apparently the school didn’t feel a few courses equals  a degree.

Thompson joins some good company, including V.P. Joe Biden, in stretching the truth about credentials.

According to Jude M. Werra, who has produced the Liar’s Index since 1995, reports that the number of executives he finds with resume lies and fabrications is at an all time high. According to his website, “For the second half of 2011 the percent of cases where education data has been fudged reached 27.27 percent, a new record, and the two-year running average also has reached a new peak, at 21.80 percent.”

Other estimates indicate that 10 percent to 50 percent of job seekers fib or flat-out lie on their resumes. According to a survey done by Forensic Psychology, 31 percent reported lying a resume. Research by Jobacle thought the number could be as high as 43 percent. And in 2004, the outplacement firm, Challenger, Gray & Christmas, reviewed 249,000 resumes and found 52 percent had discrepancies.

What do the 5 biggest resume lies look like?

• 27 percent stretch the truth about salary.
• 12 percent like about credentials (such as degrees obtained through diploma mills or just pure fabrications like Thompson).
• 15 percent fib about job performance.
• 19 percent embellish previous job responsibilities.
• 17 percent claim to have job skills they really don’t have.

Back in 2005, I wrote about how Michael Brown, the embattled ex-FEMA director during the Hurricane Katrina debacle, was exposed for lying on his resume. Brown claimed he was director of a nursing facility but the nursing home administrator told Time magazine that Brown was “not a person that anyone here is familiar with.”  He offered his oversight of an emergence services division as proof of experience but in fact, he was only an assistant to a city manager.

Brown also listed “Outstanding Political Science Professor, Central State University” as one of his accomplishments. A director of university relations at the school, however, said Brown “wasn’t a professor here, he was only a student here.”

Other famous resume fibbers include Dave Edmundson, CEO of Radioshack; Ronald Zarrella, CEO of Bausch & Lomb; George O’Leary, Notre Dame football coach; and Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut’s Attorney General.

Does everyone who lies get disqualified or fired? Apparently politics is more foregiving than business or sports.  Biden and Blumenthal survived. So did Zarella for a while, But Edmundson and O’Leary were done. 

For others it depends.  A whopping 94.6 percent of Werra’s survey respondents would pass over a candidate who falsified a degree. Approximately eighty percent of respondents disqualify candidates who falsify job assignments and titles. Werra found greater tolerance for lesser offenses with 41 percent of respondents forgoing candidates who falsified dates of employment; the remaining 59 percent would give a candidate a chance to explain. Claims of inflated results would be a total turnoff for 35.7 percent of respondents; 21.4 percent would categorically disqualify someone who omitted an employer from a resume.

Why is this lying happening? 

The Internet makes earning advanced education degrees, whether legitimate or fake, a relatively easy process. A global and mobile society means workers move smoothly from east to west and north to south, and to other countries, almost at whim. Downsizings, mergers, and a migration of managers from one company to another leave a void in human resources’ staff ability to verify references. Caution about lawsuits translates into a reluctance to give any meaningful information about ex-employees. Overwhelming managerial workloads forces many hiring managers to accept a resume at face value and a job seeker at his word.

What can you do to avoid resume fraud?

1. Search the Internet. Use networking sites like LinkedIn. Make sure resumes match up.
2. Confirm degrees before scheduling interviews.
3. Confirm employers. Make sure names, places, and phone numbers are legitimate. Call the phone number and search the website.
4. Verify professional licenses and memberships.
5. Complete pre employment testing especially for technical skills.
6. Complete a background check including education, residences, and criminal.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the Moms! We thought it might be interesting to look at jobs for mothers, or jobs that require working with moms. In April, more than 4,000 online job ads included “mom” or “mother” in their job ads. Below are some of the most commonly advertised job titles that include “mom” or “mother” in their ads. Registered Nurses were the most commonly advertised jobs, with more than 1,500 job ads. In many of these openings, these Nurses will need to work with mothers and their children.

1. Registered Nurse Mother/Baby
2. Registered Nurse Labor Delivery
3. Newborn Photographer Sales Representative
4. Our Newborn Photographer
5. Maternal Child RN
6. Movie Extras Actors Models
7. TV Film Print
8. Online Writer Blogger Reporters Nationwide
9. Mom Service Representative
10. Hearing Screener

Source: Wanted Analytics

Many Human Resource Departments are so busy guarding their houses against discriminatory hiring and unlawful firing that the competition is just walking in and raiding their chicken coop of talent.

Now I’m certainly not advocating a disregard for employment laws but these laws and common sense seem to be growing diametrically opposed to improving productivity and profitability in today’s workplaces.

For example, a manufacturer was recently fined over $600,000 for discriminating against minorities.  Several years ago this company implemented a requirement that all new hires must have a high school degree or equivalency certificate.  Sounds like a good thing, right?

Wrong! By requiring a high school education as a condition of employment, a disproportionate number of minorities were disqualified. Why? Because Blacks and Hispanics have a higher dropout rate than Whites. Many of the jobs required minimum  reading levels to follow the instructions and read the blueprints and schematics. In order to find people who could read, the company discriminated based on skills, but apparently that wasn’t good enough for EEOC. So this company was fined.

What happens now is the company lowered their hiring standard and the next round of new hires didn’t complete high school and can’t read. If they can’t read, they likely will make more mistakes and have more accidents. If they make mistakes, it costs the company money, lots of money in re-makes and lost orders. If they have more accidents, they likely will be fined by OSHA for safety violations, not counting the lost work-time and increased insurances, but at least they won’t get fined for discrimination.

While I’m not encouraging or supporting discrimination based on color, race, religion, gender, or sexual preferences, companies must be able to hire qualified workers.  Otherwise, you end up in situations like this.  

When the government was attempting to hire 33,000 airport screeners a few years ago, they determined that English proficiency and a good customer service attitude were required as conditions of employment. Just four months short of their deadline to fill all the vacancies, less than 6,000 have been hired. Why?

Nearly half of all the candidates didn’t show up for the English and Customer Service Skills testing. And for the half that showed? Only half passed the tests! 

In an attempt to hire more screeners faster and to avoid challenges of discrimination, the agency in charge lowered the standards. English proficiency and good service attitude was deemed to not be a required skill to guard our airports and keep our skies safe from domestic and foreign terrorists.

If English proficiency and customer service aren’t required, what will be? You might think that an ability to recognize shapes would be a good test. These screeners are looking for weapons on monitors and in handbags. Shapes recognition seems to be a skill that is very job specific and valid for this job. Wrong again! The shapes skills test was dismissed as “potentially discriminatory and to be avoided”. The result – an airport screener was fired this week for missing the .357 magnum a passenger carried on a plane.  While we protect the right of every individual to be employed regardless of their ability to perform, hundreds of people are put at risk. So much for common sense.

And here’s the icing on the cake. Candidates applying to become U.S. Marshals, the elite unit designated to fly undercover and protect us in the event of an attack or hijacking, no longer had to pass the marksmanship test. Why? Too many candidates were failing.

Human resource professionals and senior managers must come to their senses. When was the last time you heard about a profitable company closing their doors because they hired the best people? Maybe they received a fine or two for rejecting an unqualified but protected candidate but rarely if ever are they forced out of business. On the other hand, how many businesses have closed their doors due to a lack of sales or turnover even though they had a squeaky, clean employment record with the government? The numbers speak for themselves – just open the business section of any newspaper on any given day.

Sometimes selecting the most competent and motivated employee may run afoul of all the paradoxical and even hypocritical regulations governing how to hire, promote and fire. But organizations who want to employ the most competent and motivated employees do what it takes to ensure that their organizations remain productive, profitable and safe – even when it means using a little common sense.

Consulting groups offer hundreds of tips and solutions to improve employee engagement. But I feel they miss the mark in trying to boilerplate a strategy when describing what an actively engaged employee looks like remains so elusive.  I might have a solution.

One of my favorite musical groups is Yanni (and his orchestra). One of Yanni’s obvious leadership skills is selecting amazing individual talent and orchestrating them into a unique sound.  But while I usually enjoy listening to his music, I enjoy watching him and his orchestra perform even more.

To observe employee engagement in action, look no further than YouTube.  Search for Yanni (or other groups that have lasted through the decades) and pull up a few of the videos – then watch the musicians.  Here’s one of my favorites.

By watching this particular clip over and over, I wondered what captured my attention.  I discovered it was more than just the music.  It was the people, which means that in this video is a recipe for building active employee engagement.  But like your grandmother’s recipes, the ingredients are not always easy to replicate. Here are my thoughts. I hope you’ll share yours too. 

1. Engagement is observable.  You don’t need a survey to tell you if employees are actively engaged or not.  Just open your eyes. Real engagement that links to long term business results requires an emotional attachment, not just a mental one. Short or long term – you can see engagement. Unquestionably short-term engagement can get results too – it’s just not sustainable. Just watch the musicians in the Yanni video. Watch the expressions of each performer. Do your employees work with such passion and enthusiasm?  Do they get as much pleasure from other’s success as they do their own?
2. Engagement is infectious.  Active engagement can be felt by others.  Just as negative people can be toxic to attitude and productivity, engaged workers turn productivity and performance up a notch or two.  Other people are attracted to actively engage employees like a magnet.  They inspire others to perform better than they can alone, just by their presence.  Their passion and enthusiasm motivates others to get involved and stretch their talent.
3. Engaged workers have fun. That doesn’t necessarily mean engaged workers are party animals and great socializers.  Individuals display active engagement differently.  Take the violinist for example.  I suspect from her body language she’d be typed as a High C using the DISC behavioral model.  Anyone who plays the violin that way has be a “perfectionist” to some degree. But even though she’s actively engaged, her mannerisms and expressions are still reserved, restrained.  Just watch the intensity in her eyes. You can see and feel her engagement. Despite her controlled style, you still get the feeling she’s loving what she’s doing. Compare her behavior to the very animated, highly expressive High I saxophonist. Is he more engaged than she is? NO! He just shows his engagement differently. Regardless, these two artists just keep feeding off one another, raising the energy of everyone participating and watching. They are competing yet enjoying each other’s talent.
4. Engaged employees take talent to a new level.  This point will likely receive the more denials than any other point I make.  Most hard-working employees who are also very skilled at what they do will likely describe themselves as engaged.  But real active engagement requires more than just intellectual commitment and consistently meeting expectations. It requires more than just doing your job well. I propose that you can be a top performer without being engaged but you aren’t really actively engaged without being a top performer.  For employers, top performers who are not actively engaged poses a serious risk when it comes to turnover and productivity.
5. Co-workers respect actively engaged workers. This might be the most telling and compelling sign of active engagement.  Go back to the video. Watch how each of the background musicians watches the featured musician.  Their heads are nodding, feet are tapping, and their expressions tell the story. They value each person’s contributions to the “team” and appreciate the success and talent of the others as much as they do their own. While each individual brings exceptional and unique skill, the engaged worker recognizes that individually the sound and performance produced would never have the same appeal if he was performing solo.  These musicians get utter enjoyment from watching the success of others.

That is how you can tell if employee engagement is high in your organization- just look around the workplace. What do you see – workers going through the motions – or co-workers and managers valuing the talents and successes of others?

Despite the investment of lots of time, money, and resources on employee engagement surveys, they are likely unnecessary for companies wondering if their employees are actively engaged.  As someone once told me, “if you have to ask, you don’t have it.”

I’d be interested to hear what you see in the video. Can employee engagement be observed If so, what are the signs? Please share your thoughts.

No doubt about it.  The newest diversity issue in the workplace is age diversity. Many organizations have finally figured out how to recruit young talent only to watch them drive down a collision course with seasoned employees over issues like work ethic, respect for authority, dress code and every work arrangement imaginable.

Download Free Chapter about Millennials

The differences in age among employees working side by side will only widen in the coming years. The workplace will be increasingly characterized not just by an aging workforce, but also by four or more generations working together for the first time in history.

The potential opportunities and clashpoints have profound implications for associations and businesses, which simultaneously must develop new leaders (geeks), challenge current leaders, and retain the wisdom and skills of longtime leaders (geezers).

Take this age test. Where do you fall – are you a geek or a geezer? The more answers you know, the more likely you’re likely a ‘geezer’ from the baby boomer or veteran generation. The fewer you know, you’re likely a ‘geek,’ a Gen X or Gen Y as viewed by older workers.

Click here to learn more what you can do about managing a multi-generational workforce,

1. Name the four Beatles.

2. Finish the line: “Lions and Tigers and Bears, ____ ____!”

3. Hey Kids, what time is it?

4. What do M & M’s do?

5. What helps build strong bodies 12 ways?

6. Long before he was Mohammed Ali, we knew him as ________ _____.

7. You’ll wonder where the yellow went, ______ ____ _______ ______ ______ ____ ____________.

8. Before his role as Skipper’s little buddy, we knew Bob Denver as Dobie’s best friend __________ __ _______.

9. Brylcream, _____ _____ _____ ___ ___.

10. Bob Dylan advised us to never trust anyone over __.

Click here for Answers to the Generational Age Test.

Nearly 7 years ago, I was asked the following question by BusinessWeek Online reporter Francesca Di Meglio: “What advice do you have for those who are undecided about getting an MBA?” The column was posted on Business Week Online (May 23, 2005.)

Despite the passing of time and The Great Recession interrupting and derailing many career paths, my advice to college students and young adults would remain much the same.

Below is an excerpt of the interview with a link to the full column at the bottom of the post.

Ira Wolfe is founder of Success Performance Solutions, a 10-year-old consulting firm in Lancaster, Pa., that offers career and pre-employment testing. At 44, after realizing that dentistry was not for him, he dabbled in consulting and discovered self-assessment tests. He soon decided that his life’s work would be to help others discover their passion. (I would note that my business is really helping employers hire people who fit the job and company culture. That purpose, of course, requires understanding what each employee values and if and how the company can meet his need. Without meeting the need, low engagement, low productivity, and high turnover generally results.

Q: What advice do you have for those who are undecided about getting an MBA?

The first question I would ask is, “What do you hope the MBA will do for you?” It’s certainly a requirement just to get your foot in the door for some jobs, but many people go after degrees without really knowing why they decided to pursue education in the first place.

Q: What should MBA students do to prepare for the job search?

A: You should think through your career path. Getting an MBA doesn’t necessarily guarantee success in a knowledge-based economy. [Students] need to look at the MBA as a way for improving their knowledge base and translating that into tangible skills.  Walk through some questions: What do you want to achieve? What are your expectations? What is it about that MBA that will allow you to be unique? How will this job make you a better employee and person?

Q: Are self-assessment tests a necessity?

A: Absolutely, they are. Intellectually, many people understand what they want but aren’t sure about the emotional factors — is this going to be a satisfying career? We help people realize whether they want to work in a large or small company, the industries that interest them, how well they will fit into different organizations.

These self-assessments look at their skills but also their communication style, ability to be a team player, preferences on company size, and the kinds of organization they would like to manage. You can be an MBA working at a small family-owned business and feel exhilarated or you can be CEO of a major corporation and be very unhappy. It depends on the person.

Read the full interview on BusinessWeek Online.

Searching for the Right Career? Visit the SPS Career Test Center.

Who’s to blame for the shortage of skilled workers?

Not unlike politics, it depends who you ask. Employers blame schools. Schools blame government. Workers blame employers.

The Institute for Supply Management-New York reported this month that 20 percent of its members say the shortage of skilled labor is an obstacle to business. The National Federation of Independent Business reported a rising share of small business owners who say they have jobs that are hard to fill. A Manpower Group survey revealed that 52 percent of U.S. companies report difficulty filling jobs.

The list goes on and on.

But enough already with all the finger-pointing.  The truth is that no entity caused the problem and no one entity can fix it.

Let’s start with employers.  Yes – despite 8-plus percent unemployment, employers can’t find enough skilled workers. Every day another publication, another industry highlights the plight of companies struggling with unfilled positions.

Part of the problem can be laid squarely at the feet of employers.  Committed to maximize productivity, employers are expecting more from workers than ever before.  That approach makes good business sense.  But the need to fill open positions has such urgency that employers seek workers who can hit the ground running with little training and no on-boarding.  In the past, new workers were observed, mentored and brought up to speed gradually.  Today, employers expect the new hire “to have that job already,” according to Dr. Peter Cappelli, director of University of Pennsylvania Wharton’s Center for Human Resources.  He recommends that employers need to “drop the idea of finding perfect candidates and look for people who could do the job with a bit of training and practice.”

That seems to place on the blame on education.  While deserving of some of the blame, schools can’t be held responsible for all things wrong.  The nature of work has changed.  The number of available low-skilled jobs is evaporating faster than water on a hot summer day.  According to Edward Gordon, “between today and 2020, low-paying, low-skill jobs will shrink to just 26 percent of the total jobs in the U.S.   Worst of all, just 44 million people will be needed for those jobs, but 150 million or more candidates will be seeking those jobs.”

It used to be that if you worked with your hands and had a good work ethic, you had a lifelong career. But now it’s not the worker’s hands and back that does the grunt work – it’s a robot.  And workers that are needed by employers must understand how to program, operate, and repair a robot.  That requires good math skills…and good critical thinking skills… computer skills.  And it’s not just skills that are needed.  It’s the ability to apply those skills on the job.  And that requirement is a problem.

A headline this week in the Philadelphia Inquirer read “job seekers can’t do math.” That shouldn’t come as any surprise. It’s been reported for years that the high school dropout rate in the U.S. approaches 30 percent year.  Among the 33 other OECD countries, 17 countries had higher average scores than the United States.  When it comes to preparing students for future jobs requiring basic math skills, schools deservedly earn a failing grade.

But to be fair, shouldn’t employees assume some responsibility to develop and maintain job relevance?  The answer is an unequivocal Y-E-S.  Every organization has a responsibility to its stakeholders and/or shareholders to be productive and profitable. They can’t do that with employees who don’t come to work with the most basic of skills – reading, writing, and arithmetic. It’s not in the best interest of business to set their job skill requirements to the lowest common denominator. That places responsibility for acquiring and continually upgrading minimum job skills on the shoulders of job seekers.  Everyone is entitled to the opportunity to work.  But entitlement doesn’t include the right to middle class wages and lifestyle when the skills they bring to work are for obsolete or lower-skill jobs.

The major workplace transformation however will be driven by technology and globalization – and working with those conditions requires new skill sets. The definition of work has changed … and will change again sooner than later. Employers, workers, and schools need to get a grip on reality and start working together to prepare for employment in the future workplace.

Hiring the wrong employee is an expensive mistake.

For example, let’s say a professional services firm recruits and hires a new customer service representative (CSR).  After 2 months, the manager realizes he made a bad decision.  The employee is terminated. 

This is the example used in a recent report by McLean & Company. They placed the cost of hiring the wrong employee at about $12,000. Here’s how they derived the estimate. The analysis McLean & Company used is not very different from the multitude of other articles and forms available with a simple Google search. But it’s a good reminder about the high cost of hiring poor performers, especially since hiring trends are up and many hiring managers are unprepared.

Recruiting Costs

Salary and Benefits

 Other Significant Costs

Total Cost of a Bad Hire

You should notice that these costs might just be the tip of the iceberg and rise when candidate travel costs, relocation costs, signing bonuses, litigation costs, and benefits are incurred. 

Hiring the wrong employee is also the mistake that keeps on giving.

After this CSR (or any other employee) is let go, the organization has to start recruiting all over again.  The cost to replace this employee just keeps mounting even after he or she is gone. In addition to the recruiting costs ($3,000), there are a number of soft and opportunity costs that add up.

• Manager’s time spent dealing with HR about the under-performing employee, discussions with the employee, and documenting his or her performance.
• HR’s time spend coaching and advising the manager about performance management and legal implications of termination.
• Lost productivity due to missed deadlines, unfinished projects, and missed sales.
• Disjointed customer service. Customer fulfillment, engagement, and service is disrupted or less then desirable when management and HR’s energy is redirected toward poor performing employees instead of top performers and customers.
• Damage to reputation. The terminated employee will almost certainly spin a different story than the one told by the employer. And word of mouth travels fast, especially if the employee is active on social network sites.

Based on a quick survey of career pages on company websites, management and HR apparently haven’t gotten the message that qualified workers and quality hires are difficult to find despite sustained high unemployment. In an environment where top performers are in demand and have a choice where they work, job applicants shouldn’t be treated as 2nd rate citizens.

Following several recent presentations for CEOs and during conversations with small business owners, I realized that the short-sighted recruitment strategy of treating job applicants different from customers was not intentional. When you see an individual lean back in his chair with the proverbial light bulb glowing above his head, it becomes readily apparent that many very smart people still consider recruitment and marketing two distinct and separate functions.  As a result many managers just don’t know what to do and the advice they are getting (or heeding) from recruiters and HR isn’t effective or compelling enough to get them to say “aha, I get it now.”

As the old adage goes, pictures are a worth a thousand words. So I started out on a journey to find a business that is doing everything right marketing to customers and a horrendous job recruiting employees. The task wasn’t difficult as a friend referred me to a fast-growing sophisticated, upscale clothing retailer who is missing the recruitment boat.

Here are a few screen shots you might see if you found your way to their website after a Google search for the hottest fashion accessories or clothing.  

The site has great eye appeal. It’s clean and easy to navigate. They offer multiple calls to action, including the opportunity for customers to leave their name on a mailing list.  They create additional incentives to buy with “free shipping.” And their marketing message invites customers to engage with them using multiple social networking sites.

If I’m interested in making a purchase, I click on “Men” and search their inventory.  When ready to buy, I can “add to cart” and complete the transaction. It’s as simple as 1-2-3. If I’m interested in learning more about what other customers say, I can visit their social networking sites or click on “reviews” at the bottom of the page. 

But let’s say I’d like to apply for a job at this business.  Good luck finding the careers page.  The only tab, button, or image leading me to a career with “endless possibilities” is on the bottom of the page – the 7-letter word “careers” buried in the footer menu. For a company in the market for job applicants with “strong leadership skills,” “excellent communications skills,” and a passion for “delivering a strong product and services” who also fit their unique culture, they don’t make it easy to apply. (By the way, what company doesn’t want those same characteristics? Where’s the hook? More on that later.)

If you are smart and lucky enough to find the careers page, the experience is a complete disruption of the image and branding they display elsewhere. This company bleeds aesthetics and chic except when it comes to their careers page.

Ugh! Dull! Boring! And that’s just the beginning. If I was still interested in applying, I’d have to fax or email my resume to an anonymous address. That might have created the message of an innovation and forward thinking place to work in the 1990s but it poses serious recruitment challenges today. Top performers don’t apply to anonymous email addresses because they know that their application has a good chance of getting lost in HRs black hole. Top performers know better than to waste their time waiting for recruiters and HR to contact them. Nearly everyone knows that…except apparently management and HR. So qualified applicants just move on and a great company loses out.

And that’s just the beginning why a company using this outdated recruitment strategy will struggle to fill open positions with good job fits quickly.

The descriptions about the open jobs should pop off the page too, just like the clothing does on the rest of the site. This isn’t the place to post the job description verbatim from the employee handbook. The company sells a “sophisticated, unique experience” everywhere else except when it comes to recruiting. It’s fairly obvious that HR wrote these “help wanted ads,” not marketing and PR.  What kind of message does that send to job applicants? Companies must begin to market their careers with the same gusto that they market products and services.

In addition to these job descriptions being dull and boring, they are not optimized for Google and other search engines. How in the world do they expect these open positions to get indexed high in the search engines? Don’t they realize that the demographic audience they are seeking to attract relies on the Internet for job searches using smartphones, not the local print medium?

And finally, here’s the biggest recruitment gaffe of all.  I mentioned earlier of all the things this company does right when marketing to customers – eye-catching images, engagement using social media, valuable offers, and calls to action that capture customer email addresses.  None of that exists on the careers page.  Any attempt to engage potential employees stopped as soon as the page loaded. There is no attempt to capture my name or join a mailing list for future job opportunities.  The only mention about connecting with the company using social media is to “visit our Linkedin page.” And a quick visit to their page shows little activity. The menu in the left column also has nothing to do with careers. Why not add testimonials from current employees, a video highlighting what it’s like to work for the company, a message from the CEE, and a few of the most popular benefits?

A lot of lessons can be learned from this case study.  Here are a few of my recommendations:

1. Companies must begin to recruit job applicants using strategies similar to how they market customers. That includes promoting a job opening just like you announce a new product, service or location. Career pages must be engaging, searchable, optimized, and easy to find.
2. Companies must learn to use multiple sourcing venues especially when recruiting applicants that span several generations, socio-economic groups, and geo-locations. Limiting sourcing to only one or two media just doesn’t attract enough high quality candidates anymore, not when studies show that you need 1,000 jobseekers to see you job opening to get one quality hire.
3. Applying for a job must be a friendly yet professional experience if the company has any hopes of attracting and hiring quality workers. Sending resumes to an anonymous email address is clunky and reeks of bad customer service.
4. When a quality applicant knocks these days, you better answer! Quality candidates don’t like to wait weeks, or even days, for a response. Good customers don’t like waiting for response; neither do qualified applicants.
5. Build a talent pool. When a jobseeker decides to apply for a job at your company, stop sending them away to online job boards (CareerBuilder, Monster, etc) and social networking sites. Use an applicant processing system that allows you to capture the job applicant’s information. You wouldn’t send customer who is ready to buy now to Amazon to complete the sale. Why send job applicants to a third party site where you competition is hunting too.

I wrote more about this significant management strategy blunder in two recent blog posts:

Why Don’t Companies Recruit Employees Like They Market Customers? 

8 Steps Employers Must Take To Recruit Qualified Workers Quickly