This next trend was brought to my attention by an article that Peter Weddle recently wrote.  As I’ve mentioned in the past, Peter quite often is able to see and explain things that the rest of us don’t easily notice.  His insight on this topic is quite good.

Are you one of the 30 million people in the U.S. who participate in a fantasy sports league?  In not, you probably have relatives or friends who participate in this obsession.  The basic premise of the hobby is that participants select fictitious teams of players and then use real statistics to determine who wins or loses. Winning strategies usually involve continually selecting those with the best statistics and releasing those who don’t perform well.

Peter makes the point that during the recession, corporate America has developed their own “fantasy sports” techniques to manage employees.

“Employees may never have really been treated as assets – despite the sugar-coated words of their corporate executives – but today, they are managed as statistics.  Without any explanation or notice, companies have begun to prune their ranks of employees they deem to have less talent and to limit their hiring to only those who are perceived to have the most talent.  It is fantasy sports team management for real.

The term for this new approach is 'quiet recruiting.'  Even as employers continue to slim down their structure and lay off excess employees, they are silently trading out those considered less capable for those with more perceived value.

• In some cases, that value is acquired through 'bargain staffing.'  Employers simply hire an often younger and less experienced person who can do (or be taught to do) much of what an often older and more experienced person would accomplish, but at a much lower salary.

• In other cases, the value is acquired by 'all star staffing.' Employers trade out those in their workforce who they judge to be 'C level' performers (or worse) in order to adjust their structure and hire individuals with a track record of 'A level' performance.

Although seldom formally acknowledged, bargain staffing has always been a part of the American workplace.  If offshoring moved work to less expensive labor overseas, such 'downcosting' moved it to cheaper employees right here at home.  It is an insidious and often illegal strategy, but one that can effectively pare payroll and benefit expenses.  Hence, employers consistently disclaim any allegiance to age bias, but all too often practice de facto ageism in their staffing.

What’s new in the post-Great Recession era, therefore, is all star staffing.  For the first time ever, many companies are now hiring rank and file workers with the same score card and tactics they have long used to hire their most senior executives.  They are no longer content with a normal distribution of capability; they want, instead, to skew toward a preponderance of accomplished performers.

On the surface, that strategy would appear to be beneficial for America’s workers.  In reality, it’s quite the opposite.  Tens of millions of decent, dedicated and capable people—men and women who have successfully worked their entire lives—are now unemployed, unsuccessful in their search for a new job and unable to figure out why.”

Certainly the ethics of this strategy could be argued both ways. It is a problem that involves unfair treatment and potentially illegal behavior.  But, the reality is that this kind of hiring/firing is going on in the workplace and it will probably continue until the employer/employee balance shifts back to the employee.

Here’s the good news:  As a recruiter or hiring manager, you have the opportunity to be part of a solution to this problem and help yourself at the same time.  As Peter pointed out…“Tens of millions of decent, dedicated and capable people—men and women who have successfully worked their entire lives—are now unemployed, unsuccessful in their search for a new job and unable to figure out why.”

It only makes sense that some of these capable, experienced, and dedicated people could be a fit on your team.  Combine this with the previously discussed trend of independent contractor / full commission hiring becoming more common, and the pool of potential candidates may be much larger than you envision.

How do you connect with these candidates?  That’s a difficult question.  But, it is one we have addressed in many WorkPuzzle discussions over the last year.  As you’re tooling around the office waiting for things to pick up after the first of the year, take some time to review some of the topics we’ve covered.

Editor's Note: This article was written by Ben Hess. Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. Comments or questions are welcome. If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email. If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.