I'm sure you've all heard the saying "Buy Low/Sell High" when it comes to the stock market. Isn't it easy to pull the trigger on a hot stock when it's up and everyone is buying it? And how hard it is to force yourself to buy when a particular stock is low, and nobody wants anything to do with it? Sadly, this is how most people operate, despite their knowledge that it is a losing strategy.
This same tendency applies to scouting talent: Hiring Managers are more than willing to recruit and buy top talent at high prices when things are on a roll, but nobody is interested in this venture when the economy is down. As you might know, we (Tidemark) have become convinced that looking for talent within other industries is always the best way to broaden your net for catching the next wave of talent. The companies we work for are witnessing this first hand.
There has never been a more opportune time to take advantage of this strategy. In fact, Dr. John Sullivan recently wrote an article on this very phenomenon titled, Countercyclical Hiring: The Greatest Recruiting Opportunity in the Last 25 Years. Sullivan believes that timing plays a huge role in a company's potential for recruiting exceptional new talent. He explains in detail why now is the time to cast that net:
"The Perfect Time for Recruiting
•Competitors are out of the market — almost no one is in the talent market right now. Most firms have instituted a hiring and/or a budget freeze, which means the competition for talent is ridiculously low.
•High-quality talent is available — in some downturns, only low-quality talent is laid off by corporations. However, during the current downturn, because of a large number of recent mergers, facility closings, and the complete elimination of some major firms, the amount of extremely high-quality unemployed or underemployed talent available around the world is at an all-time high. 60% of current fully employed top talent are open to new opportunities.
•Costs are low — the lack of competition and the down economy have forced the price of available talent in almost all positions back down to reasonable levels. New referral approaches and internet and social networking recruiting tools have also reduced the cost of recruiting talent.
•Talent is amenable — the lack of available job opportunities has 'shifted the power' away from talent and toward corporations to the point where top talent will consider job opportunities and options today that they would have rejected as little as two years ago.
•The coming retirement wave — the dramatic reduction in stock prices and 401(k) values has temporarily postponed the upcoming wave of retirements. Despite this delay, these retirements will come eventually and if the economy turns around suddenly, firms may very soon be faced with a tidal wave of retirements. Because large-scale retirements may begin in as little as a year or two, now’s the perfect time to 'stockpile' and develop possible replacements for your most experienced managers and technical talent.
•The coming retention problem — if your organization is among the many that have undergone layoffs, frozen hiring, reduced budgets, and maybe even cut salaries through the use of furloughs, the odds are that your current employees are overworked and stressed. This less-than-perfect treatment coupled with the fact that many of the 'new generation' of employees have little to no loyalty to a single firm will result in a dramatic increase in turnover as soon as more external opportunities begin appearing. Obviously, you should begin retention efforts immediately but it may not be possible to remove the 'bad taste' that your current employees experienced. Expand your recruiting efforts to find replacements and realize that new hires are likely to be more loyal than most employees because they are now seeking security and they would certainly remember the fact that you 'saved them' during a period when no one else would even look at their resume."
Those who wait for the economy to improve will, once again, wind up competing with everyone else for the best candidates. At that point, as I have said before, most people will have already decided where they want to work and will be deeply entrenched, not even willing to consider other options. At least the best of them will be...
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