Top Recruiting Trends for 2006

TheLadders.com, a leading six-figure executive job site, recently sponsored SeekWeek—a five-day series of teleclasses on employment trends for 2006. Each day focused on a topic of interest to job seekers and covered issues in recruiting, personal branding, resumes, and web portfolios, best practices in job search, on-line job search, and on-going career management. Acting upon this information will help executives out-compete in a crowded job market in 2006.

The 2006 top trends in recruiting include:

1. Recruiters are actively marketing to passive candidates to source top talent

Conventional wisdom in recruiting says that the timeline for filling a job is about 60 days. The new reality is one year because recruiters are now marketing to candidates before jobs ever exist. Recruiters want to find the A-players (translation: top talent) and build relationships with those players—relationships that can be leveraged when a job appears that the recruiter needs to fill.

Because of the massive data load experienced by nearly every employer and recruiter, recruiters and companies are aggressively looking for the very best talent, but not necessarily on-line.

Recruiters and companies are out in the marketplace—at the usual career fairs and college campus recruiting events but also at professional associations, on-line chat groups, in person and virtual networking organizations, just about anywhere professionals gather and interact. They are also reading trade journals, magazines, and newspapers, searching Google and Yahoo, and doing anything they can to find clues to the identities of top talent.

2. Brand strength drives recruiting success for candidates

Companies and recruiters are looking for passive candidates and active candidates with strong brands—clearly defined value propositions and differentiators. They are looking for fit. They are looking for authenticity and passion—the courage of a candidate to be real.

Candidates need to stand out from thousands, even millions of others. How? Recruiters and companies want candidates who are less “transactional” (translation: task oriented) and more “relational” (translation: branded, visible, active, networked).

Companies and recruiters want candidates who can clearly and effortlessly articulate a differentiated and powerful value proposition (translation: the most compelling reason they should be hired!).

Branding is ever more important on resumes because cover letters are often not read. Some recruiters read them and some don’t. And some people read them after the resume rather than before it. Bottom-line? Prove fit in the resume; you cannot rely on the cover letter.

3. Deliver passion, value, and fit—on paper and in person

Recruiters agreed that candidates don’t move forward because of poorly conceived value propositions or because of the complete lack of a value proposition. They frequently see candidates who cannot clearly articulate their value—verbally or on a resume.

Recruiters see the resume as the primary communication vehicle. They want it to have branded impact—with specifics, not generalities. Conceptual won’t work—candidates need to prove value! They want candidates to articulate examples, make them concrete, and match them to the components of the value proposition. They want depth.

Recruiters stressed that candidates must adopt a business persona and an economic mindset. They must prove a fit—build a clear bridge between the company requirements and their skills and accomplishments.

Every recruiter agreed that candidates are not branded; they are generic and task-oriented. They need to be less conceptual and far more specific (translation: don’t tell what you know, tell what you did with what you know and make it real with numbers percentages, strategic impact etc.). Candidates also need to be more differentiated, more energetic, more knowledgeable about the company, and more passionate about their enthusiasm for themselves and for the position. 

Moving forward into 2006

Recruiters agree that because the marketplace is so fluid, there are no more passive candidates. Tenures are shrinking, jobs are being off shored and realigned, and people are moving from job to job with dizzying frequency. At the same time recruiters are being flooded with data that is nearly impossible to navigate. When possible they choose to ignore it and source through other methods.

Recruiters today see not passive or active candidates—rather, they see people in different stages of career management—those who are without work and actively looking, and those who are working but who are consciously managing their careers by planning next steps, building networks and visibility, and being open to opportunities as they arise.

Within that spectrum of the “career continuum,” the recruiter’s focus is always on identifying top talent—visible performers—A-list players known by their peers as best-in-class.

Traditional job search is dead and only aggressive, purposeful, and on-going career-management with visibility-building and performance-enhancing activities will deliver the results executives want.

Want to know more?

Archives of the audio webinars for the five-days of one-hour teleseminars are available at no cost. 

The roster of speakers includes:

Sarah George, SVP Recruiting & Business Strategy, Wachovia
Emily Lerner, Manager Human Resources, Zagat Survey
Kent Burns, Partner, MRINETWORK

Kirsten Dixson, Founding Partner, Brandego LLC
William Arruda, President, Reach Communications Consulting, Inc.
Deb Dib, President, Executive Power Group

Tony Lee, Publisher, CareerJournal.com and CollegeJournal.com
Samer Hamadeh, Founder and CEO, Vault.com
Mike Metzger, CEO, Payscale.com

Heather Hamilton, Staffing Programs Manager, Microsoft Corporation
Kevin Marasco, VP Marketing, Recruitmax Software
Dwaine Maltais, VP e-recruiting Solutions, Bernard Hodes Group

Dr. John Hotard, Director MBA Career Services, Fordham University
Keith Mullin, CEO, Mullin & Associates Lincolnshire Intl.
Jan Margolis, Co-Founder and Managing Director, Applied Research Corporation