Once you have determined just what a person needs to qualify for your job opening, you are ready to look for candidates. As pointed out in the previous chapter, one source is your current employees. However, it also pays to look outside the company to ensure that you select from the very best people available. In this chapter, we’ll look at various approaches to locating these candidates.

Probably the most frequently used method of attracting applicants is the classified ad section of a newspaper or trade magazine. Choosing the most effective medium depends on the type of position that is advertised. If the job is one that is most likely to be filled by a local resident, the logical source is a local newspaper; if you are willing to relocate a candidate, your best bet is a publication that the type of person you are seeking will most likely read. When the candidates for your job are not likely to be in your vicinity, advertise in newspapers in cities where they work. In addition, most industries have trade journals that cover their specific fields and many professional organizations have magazines devoted to their special needs.

Most help wanted ads are placed in the classified columns of the newspaper—the best location for routine jobs. Classified ads usually are listed alphabetically by job title. When writing your ad, it’s important to choose the appropriate job title, even if it differs from the title used by your company. For example, your title for the open job is “Engineering Associate” but the job does not call for an engineering education; it’s a clerical position keeping engineering records. If you use the company title, it will appear under “engineers” and you will not attract the desired type of candidate. Study the help wanted columns to see what kind of title best describes the job.

If a job is hard to fill, such as engineers, information technology specialists, professional staff, managers, and executives, it might be more effective to run a display ad. Display ads are much larger than classified ads and can be placed in any section of the paper, although most of these ads appear on the business pages. As these ads also cost considerably more than classified ads, a company does not use them unless it feels that the prospects for such a job will not usually read the classified section of the newspaper.

Unlike classified ads, which are restricted by limited typefaces, in a display ad you can use a variety of typefaces or specially designed layouts. As most managers are not familiar with the nuances of display advertising, assistance in writing these ads should be obtained from your company’s advertising department or ad agency. To ensure accuracy of content and style of your ads, ask the paper to send you print proofs of all display ads and, if possible, classified ads. Check all ads carefully.

You can place help wanted ads by phoning them in to the classified advertising department of the newspaper if you place only a few each year. They will provide you with the newspaper’s guidelines and rules. However, if you place a large number of classified ads or even just one display ad, you are better off using an ad agency. An ad agency won’t charge you anything for placing your ads. They get their fees from the magazine or newspaper running the ad. However, if the agency does special work for you such as designing a display ad, it might charge for that service.

Your objective is to fill the open job as rapidly as possible with the best-qualified applicant at the lowest cost. Unless you are exclusively engaged in hiring, you have many other duties that might be neglected while you search for personnel. Employment agencies can cut down on the time needed to fill the job; however, they can be a waste of your time if you don’t know how to use them effectively.

Employment agencies will not necessarily solve all your hiring problems, but they can often make the process less time-consuming, costly, and frustrating. Some of the advantages of using employment agencies are listed here:

The cost of hiring is more than just the direct costs such as advertising, agency fees, and travel. Often more expensive are the indirect costs: salaries for time spent by your own management people engaged in the hiring process (reading resumés, interviewing applicants, checking references, and related work). By having the employment agency perform many of these activities, the costs are significantly reduced.

Some companies have made the mistake of turning over the entire hiring process to an agency. This doesn’t work. Agencies are not substitutes for a company’s employment department. They don’t know the inner workings of your company or the subtleties of your corporate culture. Plus, agencies often make their money by placing candidates. Their long-term interests may not coincide with yours.

It’s up to you to develop job specs and convey them to the agency. The agency’s job is to locate possible candidates, do preliminary screening, and refer to you those closest to your requirements. Don’t rely on any outsiders to make final decisions about whom you will or will not hire.

Agencies also cannot be used to shield you from charges of discrimination. In order to evade the responsibility of screening out minorities or women for certain jobs, some companies “hint” to agencies about the “type of person” they want to have referred to them with the “understanding” that only applicants of the “right type” will be referred. They wrongfully assume that this will protect them from being charged with discrimination by claiming that they didn’t discriminate, “the agency didn’t send me any women or blacks,” or whatever. This excuse won’t fly. The company as well as the agency can be cited for discrimination.

Employment agencies don’t charge you a fee unless you hire a person referred by them and that person starts working for your company. Most agencies charge fees based on the salary paid to the employee—usually 10 to 20 percent of the annual salary.

However, sometimes it costs you nothing. Although employers pay most private agencies for their services, there are some agencies that charge the fee to the applicant. Whether the agency charges the company or the applicant often depends on the job market. When jobs are hard to find, applicants are more likely to be charged; when jobs are plentiful and applicants are hard to find, the burden of payment shifts to employers.

Every state has its own job service, aided and coordinated by the United States Employment Service (USES), a division of the U.S. Department of Labor. When created in the depression years of the 1930s, the primary function of the state services was to help find jobs for the unemployed; the same agencies usually were responsible for administering unemployment insurance plans.

An unemployed person is still required to register with the state job service to qualify for unemployment benefits. As a result, the public usually refers to these offices as “unemployment offices.” State job services have a limited value to most employers. They’re a good source for filling some positions, but not too helpful in filling others.

State job services have always been a major source for hiring blue-collar help. They usually know the needs of the companies in their areas and can serve them rapidly and effectively. In case of shortages of certain types of labor in one part of the state, they can recruit from other parts of the state and occasionally from other states through the USES.

They also test applicants for certain skills and aptitudes. They will work with employers to assist them in planning for job searches, and when large numbers of workers are needed, they have the facilities to recruit statewide or even from other states. Of course, because they are government funded, there is no fee for their services.

Many employers have found fault with the quality of referrals from the state job services. People who are not really interested in working accept referrals to maintain their unemployment benefits—a waste of time for the companies interviewing them.

Generally, state job services have not been a good source for higher-level positions. Despite government efforts to upgrade the image, employers are reluctant to entrust their more complex job specs to the state services. Additionally, currently employed applicants seeking better professional, technical, administrative, and managerial jobs usually will not register with state services.

Most professional associations offer informal placement services to their members. Members seeking jobs send their resumés to the placement committee. When companies list jobs with the association, appropriate resumés are referred to them.

The problem with this is that volunteers often run the services or committees. Because the members are not trained in employment screening, they might refer unqualified candidates, wasting the employers’ time. In some organizations, the committee meets once a month or less frequently, resulting in delay in sending out the resumés. However, some organizations do have full-time professionals doing the placement. When contacting a professional association for referrals, learn how they are organized and operated.

Most colleges, community colleges, and trade schools are anxious to place their graduates and usually offer placement services for this purpose. It pays to contact the schools in your area and list your company’s job openings. Most large companies make regular visits to college campuses throughout the country to recruit graduating students. If you seek trainees with specialized education, it pays to keep in regular touch with schools and colleges that teach those specialties.

You don’t have to hire people to have them work for you. At some time during each year almost all companies use “temps” (temporary personnel) who work on their premises, but are on the payroll of a temporary staffing or employee leasing service. According to a survey by the American Staffing Association, 90 percent of companies in America use temporary help services.

Temporary services differ from employment agencies in that they don’t place people in jobs, but hire the employees themselves and “lease” them to employers who require either full-time or part-time workers for short periods of time. These jobs range from simple clerical or low-skill laborers all the way to professional and executive positions.

The temp services charge a fee to the company based on the skill level and the number of hours worked by the people they supply. As the workers are not on your payroll, you pay no benefits or payroll taxes. You are free from the burden of withholding income taxes. Temps accrue no sick leave or vacation time. If the temp is absent, the temp service will send another person to do the work. If you are not satisfied with one temp, the agency will send a replacement. You don’t have the hassle of hiring, disciplining, and perhaps firing people.

Some business executives have a dream—to run a company without the problems of hiring, administering, and dealing with employees. Believe it or not, it can be done. Instead of hiring people, you can lease them just as you would a car or a piece of equipment. This is much different from using temps to fill in for absent workers or to handle a work overload. Companies using rent-a-workers maintain only a core group of key personnel and have most of their work done by leased employees. Many of the leading temp services have expanded into this field. In most cases, leased employees work on company premises. They might even be employees who were downsized by the company, and then hired by the staffing service and leased to their former employer.

The advantages of leasing employees are that the company is relieved of having to recruit staff and deal with all of the administrative headaches. However, there are many drawbacks to leasing people. When you lease a car, you’re still responsible for maintaining it. When you lease personnel, you still have to train them and direct their work. They might not be your employees, but they are your associates. It’s up to you to keep them motivated. This is not easy when you have no control over their compensation. It’s tough to instill a sense of loyalty and ownership when the team member doesn’t identify with the company.

Because leased employees don’t receive the same benefits as regular employees, a climate of resentment might develop that impairs morale and productivity. To overcome this, many leasing companies are providing equivalent benefits to their people—of course, this is reflected in higher charges to the employer.

Executive recruiters (also known as headhunters) have been a major resource for locating senior managers and hard-to-locate technical and professional people since the rapid expansion of business that followed World War II. They have helped to fill many top-level positions for some of the major corporations in this country and abroad.

Many people think of executive recruiting or “headhunting” firms as just another type of employment agency. There are some similarities; indeed, some employment agencies will do proactive searches for clients. However, executive recruiters generally operate in a different fashion from employment agencies.

Employment agencies obtain applicants primarily through advertising, their own reputations, and referrals. Most people who register with an employment agency are active job seekers. They are either not currently employed or, for whatever reasons, have chosen to seek a job while still employed.

The agency usually will interview the applicant and check his or her background against its list of job openings. If there is a match, it refers the applicant to the client. Often when an agency receives a job order it will send several resumés to the employer, which then will choose those people who should be invited for interviews. If there are no open jobs to fit the applicant, the agency will retain the applicant’s information in its files and when new job orders develop, will search these files to locate qualified candidates. Such files are one advantage of using an agency.

Executive recruiters work quite differently. The focus of the recruiter’s activity is the employer—not the applicant. An executive recruiter will spend time studying the job the client is seeking to fill, research to determine in what companies the type of person they want probably is working, identify possible candidates, and then contact them to sell them on considering the job.

Once a candidate expresses interest, the recruiter will meet with him or her for an informal interview. Usually the name of the employer is kept confidential until an interview with the employer is arranged. If there is mutual interest, the candidate will be invited back to the recruiter for a more detailed interview. At this point, references will be checked; then the recruiter will discuss the candidate’s background and qualifications with the client.

Unlike an agency, the executive recruiter does not send a batch of resumés from which the employer selects candidates. The recruiter, who then presents the select few candidates to the employer for consideration, does all of the screening.

It’s not cheap. Fee structures vary somewhat in the field. Be sure to get a full understanding of what it will cost before engaging an executive recruiter. Most search firms base their fees on the salary paid to the person hired. The most common percentage is 25 to 35 percent of the annual salary. If the compensation package also includes bonuses or stock options, some search firms factor the estimated value of these into the fee.

Unlike employment agencies, executive recruiters usually receive a nonrefundable retainer before they start the assignment. This retainer usually is one third of the estimated fee. When the job is filled, the fee is recalculated on the basis of the actual salary minus what has already been paid. If the job is not filled, there is no additional fee. In addition to the fee, the employer agrees to pay expenses incurred in the search. This includes travel costs for the recruiter, travel costs of candidates, telephone costs, and other expenses directly involved in the search.

Some firms charge hourly fees. Just as lawyers charge clients on the basis of billable hours, some search firms will use a similar formula. They set an hourly rate with a maximum fee, such as one third of the annual salary paid the successful candidate. The fee will be calculated on both bases and the client pays whichever is lower; thus, if the job is filled rapidly, you might save money.

Some search firms, particularly those associated with management consulting divisions of the major accounting firms, charge a flat fee, which is paid whether or not the job is filled. These fees usually are lower than the contingency fees. However, you risk the possibility that they won’t find a suitable candidate.

Some recruiters dealing with high-tech companies have worked out deals to accept part of the fee in company stock. In this way, the company benefits by conserving its current cash position, and the recruiter benefits by what he or she hopes will be the growing value of the stock.

Most executive recruiters do not refund fees if the selected candidate doesn’t work out. However, they usually will seek a replacement at no additional fee other than reimbursement of expenses.

An easy way to fill jobs is through personal contacts; yet we can’t depend on knowing somebody who knows somebody when we have to fill a job immediately. One way to improve your odds of getting recommendations is to network, meaning to make connections with people who are likely to know people with the skills and experience your company usually hires.

A logical source is people who work for firms that hire the same types of people you do. It’s unlikely that your competitors will refer good people to you; however, there are lots of noncompeting firms that might be good sources. Cultivate them.

A competitor or a company in a similar business may lay off staff. Staff who have been laid off through no direct fault of their own are an excellent source of candidates. Sometimes the company that is letting staff go will run your ad in their own internal newspapers or even contact the laid-off workers on your behalf.

One of the most cost-effective ways to recruit “techies” is the job fair. Job fairs started as an informal part of technical society conventions. For example, when engineers attended the convention, they often would spend more time looking for a new job than attending the work-shops and technical programs. Companies would set up elaborate hospitality suites at a nearby hotel and invite prospective employees to visit and learn about the opportunities at that firm.

Today’s job fairs are not necessarily tied in with conventions. Recruiters or trade show operators run them. Companies rent a booth at the fair and staff it with representatives of the human resources and technical departments. Applicants are given a guidebook listing the participating companies and the types of positions they are seeking to fill.

The sponsors of the job fair advertise in local and trade papers, and quite often participating companies will advertise their jobs in the papers and invite interested applicants to visit their booths. Users of job fairs have found them to be a relatively inexpensive way to hire people, and many companies participate in job fairs several times a year.

Everything now can be found on the Internet. You can purchase all kinds of goods and services by clicking your mouse. So why not seek to fill your jobs through the computer? The applicants you want might be sitting at their terminals right now, surfing the Net for career opportunities.

Often, Internet advertising for open positions is placed on the company’s own Web site. Today most companies have Web pages on which they describe the company’s activities. These pages are designed primarily so that customers or potential investors can learn about the organization. Many firms include in their Web pages announcements of job openings.

The trouble with many Web pages is that it’s not easy to access employment information. To attract applicants, design a special recruiting page and put a connecting link on the home page so applicants can easily access it. Make your recruiting page exciting and enticing. Give prospects an intimate look at the company through video clips, vignettes about successful employees, and meaningful job descriptions. Make it easy to contact the company and provide an e-mail address for submission of resumés.

You might be thinking: “Web pages are okay for big companies—but my company isn’t that well known. Job seekers are not likely to even know about it, let alone hit our Web page.” The solution: Use one of the many Internet job referral services. These are the cyber-equivalent of the help wanted pages in newspapers or technical publications.

A survey of 1000 corporate recruiters found that 71 percent report spending up to 20 percent of their recruitment budget on the Internet—and this is growing exponentially. Of companies that responded, 75 percent plan to increase their Internet recruiting advertising in the coming year. It is estimated that the Internet recruiting business will go from $250 million in 1999 to $5.1 billion by 2003.

There are several Internet referral services currently online and many more are opening every month. With so many, sometimes it can be hard to choose the appropriate server for your needs. Log on to several sites, study their approaches, compare their rates and their records of success before choosing those you wish to use.

According to Media Matrix, an Internet consulting firm, the top 10 job sites are as follows:

Another source that should not be overlooked is the postings of individuals seeking jobs on the job service Web pages. There are literally thousands of applicants posting their qualifications on one or more of the listing services. If you are able to narrow the field down to a reasonable number of prospects, it will bring to your attention people who might fit your needs.

However, unless there are very few available people in the job you seek to fill, you’ll have to spend more time scanning the postings than it might be worth. Keep in mind that a great portion of the postings are from men and women who are currently employed and not registered with agencies, not regular readers of want ads, or not desperate for a job.

When jobs are hard to fill, every possible source should be used so that you can attract the best-qualified applicants. You may have to screen many people in order to make the best selection. Advertise, use employment agencies, executive recruiters, job fairs, and the Internet. Let people know that your company is a company that people want to work for.