I just saw this post on RecruitingBloggers.com about Happiness, Work, Sex, and Gender. There is typically more sex in the beginning stages of a new relationship between a “man and a woman.”  So will this mean that we should all give workplace romances a try and stop trying to prohibit them? Let the employees be their free spirit. We all want happy employees. Happy employees are more productive.

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Many organizations say that they have a team oriented workplace and that they look for team players.  In fact, these organizations have a group of selfish individuals creating a cut throat atmosphere where each individual is out to fend for themselves. There is no true team where every team member helps each other out.

If you are thinking about converting your organization to teams, what type of team do you want to create? Do you want a team of superstars or a team of individuals?  I recently read an article about Teams of Individuals by Christopher Williams who attempts to answer this question by using several examples from Major League Baseball. What can we learn about group dynamics and teamwork from baseball teams?

A team comprises any group of people linked together in pursuit of a common purpose, who depend on each other to accomplish their purpose, develop relationships with each other, and develop roles in the team. A group in itself does not necessarily constitute a team. A group of people standing in line at the checkout counter is not team. Tom standing at the back of the line could care less about Joe Schmoe standing in front of him. To be an effective team, they must have a clear purpose, excellent listening skills, participation, and member accessment. 

The Florida Marlins resemble a true team. They are team of young kids who are mostly rookies. Last year, they overachieved under the direction of Joe Girardi as the manager. They had the lowest payroll in the majors, won 78 games, and were in the playoff race up until the last week of the season. However, Joe Girardi, who won manager of the year, was subsequently fired at the end of the season which makes absolutely no sense to me. He only managed one season with Florida Marlins.

This year, the Florida Marlins have all of their starters from last year returning. They still have a very low payroll.  New manager, Fredi Gonzalez, inherits this talented team of overachievers who feel that they have something to prove. What do they have to prove? That you do not have to have a payroll of $200 million to have a winning team. I am looking to see this “team” continue to overachieve.

Can the New York Yankees have the type of success that the Florida Marlins are having? Yes, but it will take a change in mindset, and this starts with the big bossman at the top. Mr. George needs to be willing to allow his team to have those losing seasons as they rebuild talent that was lost in the spending spree. You may want to keep one high priced person on the team for the younger players can look up to. You want to find players that want to be a part of the team.

I have seen countless number of job ads that require a certain number of years experience as a requirement. How many times have you hired a person with 5 years experience and it doesn’t work out? If you are presented with a candidate that has only 1 to 2 years experience, this person may be a better fit. This person may be willing to do whatever it takes to learn what they need to learn to get the job done for the organization. This person may have the stronger work ethic.

Those motivational posters that you have lining your office walls about Together Everyone Acieves More doesn’t build a winning team. So take those posters down and throw them in the dumpster. Nor does calling someone a team player build a winning team. So stop saying that you want a team player.

True teams have the ability and the drive to take on more risk than individuals and can attempt a level of greatness that is beyond the realistic hope of any individual. Remember in 2003 when the Florida Marlins had a payroll of $60 million and beat the New York Yankees in the World Series. It proves that money doesn’t buy you a championship team. Only a team of motivated and unselfish individuals will be successful.

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I recently met a technical recruiter who works for a local staffing company here in Fort Lauderdale. She mentioned to me that they were currently trying to alter their recruitment efforts. After searching online daily for the perfect candidate, she has often found that the job boards, such as Monster and Career Builder are showing the same resumes in a search. Other than referral programs, she is now looking for ideas on recruitment trends or non traditional recruitment ideas.

If you plan on staying online, Social network recruiting is a valuable resource that no recruiter or small business owner can ignore anymore. There is a growing source of candidates on theses networks. Examples of such social networks include: LinkedIn, FaceBook, MySpace, H3, Experience, and Jobster.  Jobster is a web 2.0 company that is now offering free job postings to employers. I have spoken with several recruiters here in Fort Lauderdale, and said that they will be signing up for an account at Jobster to give them a try.

I also know several recruiters who sign up for a free month of AOL  just to get access to the AOL member profiles. Just one warning.  Cancelling your AOL account at the end of the month can be a very painful experience. However, this can get you job titles and locations of aol members, an email address to contact them. If you’re looking for high level executives, then ZoomInfo is a good source of leads.

Along with using the usual recruitment practices, I have personally had success with using the  Career Services Center at local universities when I was running my business in Hawaii.  They will post the open position on their bulletin board at the university. And it’s a free service! You can also go to the student life office and reserve to set up a booth to recruit. At the beginning of each semester, student run clubs get together in one place on campus to recruit new members. With all those students in one place, this is a great place to recruit for your organization.

For any recruiting campaign to be successful, you will need to increase the marketability of your company. You must be meeting a number of candidates in a month you can inform them about the vacant positions available with you. They might have a friend or relative who has the required skill set. I have found this a very effective technique as it always helps to generate fresh resumes.

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There’s a new paradigm occurring within the HR Strategic Staffing function. 1) Linking recruiting to business strategy. 2) Adding value as a Strategic Partner/Consultant. 3) Streamlining Costs. 4) Improving productivity. 5) Improving Quality of Hire. 7). Customer Focused. 6) Do all of the above plus more without sacrificing quality of hire. Interviewing falls into one of these categories as well as reducing cost per hire and a few other metrics that you did not mention. But what about the other critical skills and core competencies that are required to plan, recruit, select and integrate quality diverse talent into the organization.

Is it important for HR function in an organization to provide strategic staffing and recruiting skill and competency training for their HR recruiting team members? The answer is yes. All recruiters should undergo basic skill training before they analyze and shortlist resumes. I never met a person who was born to be a Strategic HR Recruiter! It is a learned function that develops over a period of time, which has to be observed and measured along the way in order to optimize individual and team performance levels.

I have been searching for some training that is available to help train recruiter’s and generalist’s to develop their core competencies in the areas of strategic planning, analytical thinking, communication, and talent management. In addition, develop the skills that link to each of these competencies. Most organizations are still not linking their day to day HR recruiter activities to the business core competencies. This type of program will help mentor and improve the career opportunities and performance for the HR recruiter and easily align their skills and competencies to the business objectives and core competencies.

Those are areas of personal growth. The best way to develop those traits is with experience and/or regular review and counseling. I can teach someone how to network and aggressively market themselves in theory, but it won’t be useful without the motivation or experience of actually doing it. I recommend you hold weekly or monthly peer review sessions so your staff can discuss their recent experiences and make suggestions to each other. Wanting to impress others should also motivate them to succeed and become more aggressive.

There is an interactive training course for recruiters called “How to Interview & Hire the Right People”. This interactive learning course is on CD-ROM and published by SkillSoft which focuses on organizing the hiring process into four parts. Their course focuses in on proper job order creation, resume screening, interviewing effectively, and quantification of results. It saves your last point to allow you to train in segments.

In order to remain competitive and to realize the benefits of competitive advantage, organizations must place more emphasis on preparing their staffing and recruiting function by focusing on the development of strategic staffing and recruiting capability and the systems and processes which support this capability.

An effective training program should be designed to implement strategic staffing training solutions that:

• Can be aligned with an organization’s strategies and goals
• Provides the best enabling recruiting process technology solutions and training content
• Leverages a proven strategic staffing training methodology
• Link individual Strategic HR Recruiter competency gaps to training and development
• Facilitates the Strategic HR Recruiter acceptance to critical skills and competencies
• Analyzes and measures the practical application of critical staffing skills and competencies
• Is designed to produce measurable and quality breakthrough results

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Find the latest diversity careers at Diversity Jobs.com.

Related Link: Talent Management program from Workitect puts emphasis on performance improvement plan, performance management program and succession plan information.

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There is in fact a graduate school that is affordable, and I found it. I am now officially in the Liberty University Graduate program for my second master’s. Liberty University offers degree programs that can be taken both on campus at Lynchurg, Virginia or online. Graduate tuition at Liberty is only $375 per credit hour. Most graduate schools such as Regis University, Regent University, Nova Southeastern University, and even my alma mater Hawaii Pacific University charge $520 per credit hour and up. I still highly recommend Hawaii Pacific University for the simple fact that they have a strong focus on customer service. They treat the students as customers and they listen to their customers. The professors are friendly, helpful, and knowlegeable in the subject areas that they teach. However, there are a couple of professors that are very egotistical.

I have looked at the University of Phoenix and Capella University. Tuition at Capella University is around $1,900 per course, while the University of Phoenix is at around $1,200 per course. However, I wanted to go with a more traditional university that is a little more well known with a tuition payment plan. At many other universities, it is either use financial aid, grants, and scholarships, or pay in full. The only other university that offers tuition payment plans is Hawaii Pacific University with their partnership with Tuition Management Systems.

One other thing. I don’t know about you, but I do not like to be sold when it comes to my education. When I told the enrollment counselor that I am just looking around at other universities, I happened to mention Liberty University. She said she never heard of it. Either she is lying just to get me to enroll or she really doesn’t know her competition.

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Do you spend a lot of your recruitment time in the actual interview process itself, or you do more of the sourcing, screening, and background checking side of things? In my past experiences, I have done both and feel that with 1-2 other levels of interviews with hiring managers for candidates to go through, I could easily back away from doing so much in-depth interviewing with each candidate. However, I feel that the interview is the most important part of the employee selection process.

After many years of it, both as a small business owner and as a candidate, I suppose it is possible that I am feeling burn out with the process. I am finding that I am not as eagerly looking forward to stepping away from other projects to meet with candidates the way I used to be. I would still like to keep managers well trained in the interviewing process and provide them with whatever guidance they may need.

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Looking for ideas for strengthening our recruiting network for hourly retail employees? What recruiting techniques, sources, are useful in recruiting hour retail employees?

I would say number one ask your top employees for referrals. They tend to be your best spokespeople. Also, if you are flexible in terms of hours network with some local community centers or schools. You may be able to get a pipeline of individuals that are in a transition period, going to school, retired etc. If you build upon your reputation as a good employer to work for and are involved in the community you will be surprised at how many people are calling you regarding opportunities to work at your company.

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