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You’ve heard that old saw that if something quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, it’s probably a duck? Might as well apply it to the U.S. economy.

Today’s Economic Trends Index from The Conference Board declined slightly from July. It now stands at 96.7. In July it was 97.4.

Obviously, that’s not good news, though a .7 drop in an index that is up 9.4 percent in a year might be ignorable if all it did was quack. But the Index is also walking like the duck it is. For the first time since March 2009 seven of the eight components that go into the index turned negative.

The Conference Board reported the weakening indicators were: Percentage of Respondents Who Say They Find “Jobs Hard to Get”; Initial Claims for Unemployment Insurance, Percentage of Firms With Positions Not Able to Fill Right Now; Part-Time Workers for Economic Reasons; Job Openings; Industrial Production; and Real Manufacturing and Trade Sales.

The only component of the Economic Trends Index that improved between July and August was the number of employees hired by the temp industry. That’s a strong sign that America’s companies aren’t yet confident enough to hire full-time.

“Employment growth has been slow lately, and the Employment Trends Index suggests that it may slow even further this fall,” said Gad Levanon, associate director, Macroeconomic Research at The Conference Board. “However, we still expect job growth rather than an outright decline in the next several months.”

A Manpower survey also out today supports that view. The staffing firm’s quarterly survey of some 18,000 employers says 71 percent of the businesses don’t expect to hire or layoff any workers. Only 15 percent anticipate increasing staff in the 4th quarter; 11 percent expect to cut workers. The final 3% of employers are undecided about their hiring intentions.

The Net Employment Outlook, often shortened to simply Outlook or NEO, is a +4 percent, or +5 percent when seasonally adjusted. That’s up from the -1 percent for the 4th quarter of 2009 and flat with the 3rd quarter Manpower forecast.

The forecast is just what a slew of surveys and indices predicted would be ahead for the second half of this year. In a survey reporting 65 percent of employers expected no change in staffing levels during the second half of 2010, CareerBuilder CEO Matt Ferguson said, “The survey indicates that we’ll see sustainable new job growth through the remainder of the year, but it will be absent of any dramatic shifts.”

Now, Manpower Inc. Chairman and CEO Jeff Joerres, is saying the same thing. “The hiring intentions for the fourth quarter are not enough to break through the labor market sound barrier that we’re all eagerly anticipating, as 71 percent of employers indicate no change in hiring.”

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Is there nothing new under the sun?

Sun Tzu was an ancient Chinese general. His Art of War is the oldest military treatise in the world.

He thought spies were an essential part of war — and where is Sourcecon being held in 2010?

At the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C. (on September 28 and 29).

When I saw that, it made me want to go back to Sun Tzu and see if there is anything he can tell us about intelligence gathering today.

Here’s what I found: economics.

This is the first thing Sun Tzu says about spies. (Chapter 13:1)

Raising 100,000 men and marching them a long distance will bring heavy losses and drain the resources of the state.

Men will drop exhausted on the highways.

It will cost 1,000 ounces of silver a day.

There will be problems at home and abroad.

Up to 700,000 families will be negatively affected.

Waging war costs money. It uses up your resources. It takes people away from their regular jobs.

So, one of Sun Tzu’s major goals was to avoid war altogether or reduce the cost and an essential part of his strategy was the use of spies.

He said that a wise general will use “the highest intelligence of the army for spying.” (13:27).

Here’s the reason. If a spy can identify the most important targets and tell you how to get to them, it spares you the cost of throwing a big army into the fray without knowing exactly where you’re going.

So, in effect the spy leads the army. She tells the generals where to go.

Spies are a most important element in war, because on them depends an army’s ability to move. (13:27)

How does this relate to recruiting? Well, what are the options? If you put an ad on a job board, you’ll get a ton of resumes. Most of them are going to be irrelevant, but your recruiters will have to spend time sorting them out.

The person you’re after, however, might not even be looking for a job. She might not be searching the job boards and it’s likely that no one is telling her about the ad either. So, all of your time is wasted, the job remains unfilled, and the required work remains undone.

On the other hand, you can hire a sourcer who will go out and identify good people and then the recruiter can call them.

Which path is most likely to reach the right targets faster? And which is going to be cheaper in the end?

Sun Tzu says that:

Hostile armies can face each other for years, striving for the victory which is decided in a single day. This being so, to remain in ignorance of the enemy’s condition simply because one grudges the outlay of 100 ounces of silver in honors and payments, is the height of inhumanity. (13:2)

And what is the most important kind of intelligence? According to Sun Tzu, names.

Whether the object be to crush an army, to storm a city, or to assassinate an individual, it is always necessary to begin by finding out the names of the attendants, the aides-de-camp, and door-keepers and sentries of the general in command. Our spies must be commissioned to ascertain these. (13:20)

Cheaping out on the cost of a sourcer is only going to postpone, sometimes at great cost, your opportunity to meet the people you’re pursuing.

Types of Spies

In The Art of War, Sun Tzu says that reliable information has to come from the horse’s mouth.

Knowledge of the enemy’s dispositions can only be obtained from other men. (13:6)

In recruiting, this is a vote for telephone sourcing. The Internet isn’t necessarily going to give you up-to-date information. Calling a company will. Instead of finding the footprints of people who were once with a firm, you’ll speak to someone who will tell you who is there today.

This doesn’t mean that Sun Tzu would refuse to use the Internet. In fact, he simply distinguished between different types of spies. Some were simply closer to the action.

Hence the use of spies, of whom there are five classes: (1) Local spies; (2) inward spies; (3) converted spies; (4) doomed spies; (5) surviving spies. (13:7)

The local spy would be the person who was simply in the neighborhood of the enemy.

In our case, that could be a supplier who sells to your target firm or a customer who knows a few sales reps and customer service people. Or a sales rep who knows a few people in his customer’s company.

An inward spy is someone inside the belly of the beast. Imagine someone working with the competition who knows people who are going to lose their jobs in the near future. He might tell you who they are in order to help them.

Sun Tzu might add that a nice referral fee could help loosen tongues.

Converted spies are spooks who become double agents on your behalf. Sun Tzu considered them to be the most important sources of information:

The enemy’s spies who have come to spy on us must be sought out, tempted with bribes, led away, and comfortably housed. Thus they will become converted spies and available for our service.

It is through the information brought by the converted spy that we are able to acquire and employ local and inward spies.

It is owing to his information, again, that we can cause the doomed spy to carry false tidings to the enemy.

Lastly, it is by his information that the surviving spy can be used on appointed occasions.

The end and aim of spying in all its five varieties is knowledge of the enemy; and this knowledge can only be derived, in the first instance, from the converted spy. Hence it is essential that the converted spy be treated with the utmost liberality. (13:21-25)

In our context, however, this doesn’t seem too relevant. So, we might want to think of them as any kind of turncoat, for instance, someone who joins your company and gives you the names of the best people at his old firm. This is not much different from the inward spy.

Doomed spies are people you know are going to get caught. You might even expose them yourself so you feed them phony information which they then divulge to your opponents.

The closest we come to this is the plausible deniability external recruiters and sourcers provide to the company that wants to hire people from its direct competition without giving the other side a reason to counterattack.

“Oh, we didn’t recruit him,” the CEO says to his angry opposite number. “He came to us.”

Of course, it was through a 3rd party recruiter who was never actually told to go after people in the most relevant firms.

A surviving spy is someone who manages to go into enemy territory and come back with the info. In other words, anyone who does what they’re paid for. If you don’t deliver the goods, you’re not going to survive very long.

Sun Tzu says that the combination of the information from the different sources of information is the secret sauce of intelligence gathering.

When these five kinds of spy are all at work, none can discover the secret system. This is called divine manipulation of the threads. It is the sovereign’s most precious Faculty. (13:8)

The various spies are ignorant of each other and the general is the only one who has the big picture created by all of the information from the individual channels combined.

Only he has the power to guide one spy with information gathered from another.

One can imagine a recruiting manager who has Sun Tzu’s dedication to the use of spies hiring both an Internet sourcer and a telephone sourcer to work on the same jobs.

If he’s really wily and he finds some good sourcers, he might want to keep those sources of information for himself alone. He wouldn’t even tell them about each other and if he thought that news from one would help the other, he would make himself the middle-man and carry suggestions to each of them himself, thereby becoming the “divine manipulator of the threads.”

Treat Me Nice

In The Art of War, Sun Tzu says:

In the whole army, the most intimate relations are maintained with the spies. (13:14)

The spy is to have direct access to the general. This can be a problem in recruiting because the sourcer often has to work through a recruiter who has no detailed understanding of the job or the client’s industry but wants to maintain direct access to the hiring manager himself.

He doesn’t let the sourcer ask any relevant questions and is too concerned about looking dumb to go back when necessary and ask them himself.

This can be a costly mistake. If you introduce a trusted sourcer as a member of your team the questions she asks will impress the hiring manager. He will know that you are serious about the search.

And, providing the sourcer with helpful information will boost her enthusiasm and her desire to help you.

Sun Tzu points out that only a leader with people-sense knows how to deal with a spy properly.

Spies cannot be usefully employed without a certain intuitive sagacity. They cannot be properly managed without benevolence and straightforwardness. (13:15-16)

And Chung Yu, a commentator, adds:

When you have attracted them by substantial offers, you must treat them with absolute sincerity; then they will work for you with all of their might.

The same problem occurs when the recruiter and sourcer have to work through HR. The HR person can be very bright but she’s not a specialist in the field she’s recruiting for. She doesn’t necessarily know the best companies to recruit from or the conventions the candidates would go to or the best directories for their profession.

But her job might be to keep you away from the person who does.

What kind of person is the spy, herself? Tu Mu, a commentator, says that the surviving spy must appear to be an unimpressive fool. In reality, however, she must be a person of keen intellect with a will of iron. She must be used to doing dirty work and able to put up with being treated badly.

Sourcing on the phone or Internet can be tedious work. When you call a company you are not always welcomed with open arms. You often have to go back again and again to get the information you need. And, you have to have some moxy.

Tu Mu tells the story of three men who went to spy on the enemy camp. They posed as night watchmen and didn’t hesitate to correct soldiers who were in breach of discipline.

As a telephone sourcer, I would add that you have to know how to elicit information. Let me give you an example.

I used to sell small businesses. I would approach an owner and ask him if he wanted to sell his business.

He would ask me how much it was worth, and that’s what I wanted him to do, but not so I could answer his question. First, I wanted him to answer mine and this set-up question opened the door to a slew of questions from me about his finances.

Should We Be Doing This?

The goal of all war is not destruction but gain and Sun Tzu warns leaders not to fight just because they are angry.

No ruler should put troops into the field merely to gratify his own spleen; no general should fight a battle simply out of pique. (12:18)

Likewise, the goal of sourcing is not breaking up teams. We help to build companies that need talent and expertise. To do that we connect people with companies that are willing and able to offer them the most money for their work and the best professional opportunities.

Managers who can’t keep their staff don’t like losing people so they say that what we do is wrong.

That’s just sour grapes.

I don’t think we’re always right, though. Sun Tzu says:

In no other business should greater secrecy be preserved. (13:14)

We love to talk about our processes — publicly. We’re about to go to Washington to do just that.

Why? Because we like rubbing shoulders with each other? Because we want to learn?

Or, because the presenters are blowhards who like to put our trade secrets on parade so they can show everybody how much they know?

Real spies don’t go to spy conventions. And if you tell everyone how to do what you do, won’t you end up with more competition? Or, at least, more pretenders who can talk enough of a game to sell their services even if they can’t, in the end, deliver quality goods — which gives all of us a bad reputation.

If public teaching is wrong, then I’m the greatest offender. So, welcome to my world.

I’ll see you at Sourcecon in DC in September.

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It has taken many years to get to this point, but almost everyone in recruiting has come to understand the necessity of metrics. Unfortunately however, the vast majority of metrics in use today have little impact because they were not designed to effectively “get the attention” of executives.

The issue isn’t metrics in general; at firms like Microsoft and Google, executive team meetings are often referred to as the equivalent of “math camp.” While other firms may not be as “geeky,” metrics rule the boardroom. The lack of interest in HR metrics also cannot be attributed to HR being an overhead function, as that state is true for both finance and supply chain management, neither of which fail to garner attention.

The real issue few pay attention to HR metrics is a simple one: most simply are not compelling. Let’s face it: HR is rarely a strategic priority, and due to years of bureaucracy and failure to meet expectations, it is something that most managers and executives would rather deal with less rather than more unless it is immediately relevant to their business.

For metrics to be effective in altering behavior, they need to be both visible and immediately relevant to the audience that needs influencing, not the party producing them. To accomplish that, recruiting leaders need to proactively identify and understand the factors that make a metric a critical “must-see” metric. The goal behind measurement initiatives should be to get executives to demand access to your metrics, to pay thorough attention to them, and to know immediately how to act differently in response to them.

Five Differentiators of Great Metrics Initiatives

Most metrics initiatives kill the design phase upon selecting a final short list of “easy-to-provide” metrics. Unfortunately this approach assures mediocre results! Delivering “easy to provide” metrics is like writing a free newspaper to be delivered via those plastic cubes alongside major streets … the vast majority distributed end up as garbage littering the environment. Great metrics on the other hand are like a good book, article, or blog post: they tell a story.

In my years of advising leading organizations, I have noted five differentiators that truly distinguish great initiatives from all the rest, they include:

1. Formal planning — they use research and benchmarking to go far beyond delivering what’s easy, taking into consideration the audience the metrics will need to influence.
2. Compelling format — they deliver information in a manner that fits the interests of managers and executives, presenting data that tells a “complete” story.
3. Visibility — they publish information in conjunction with other highly visible internal and external discussions, demonstrating HR’s relationship to operational performance.
4. Relevance — they produce intelligence related to the key strategic initiatives of the day and secondary/tertiary topics that impact those initiatives.
5. Emphasis on dollar impact — whether the metric provided is a descriptive word, a number, a percentage or a ratio, it is converted to “dollar impact.”

Each of the five differentiators can be approached in a variety of ways. The following checklist identifies 25 factors related to each of the categories listed above. Considering these factors when designing your recruiting metrics will go help a great deal with ensuring your managers and executives value them, pay attention to them, and change behavior as a result of having studied them.

Top 25 Characteristics of Great Metrics Initiatives (grouped by differentiator)

Formal Planning

• Benchmark the best — rather than starting from scratch, do some benchmark research both inside and outside your organization to identify which metrics and reporting approaches have been successful elsewhere. Also don’t forget to learn about what didn’t work. Use your organization’s existing financial reports as a model of how your executives like their information reported, but viewing those of other organizations can spark new ideas.
• Be audience-centric — it’s always a good idea to survey or interview your target audience to identify their expectations, i.e. characteristics of a great metric that is most likely to gain their interest.
• Pretest your approach — rather than assuming that your metrics will be effective, pretest them with a sample audience. Include “super critics” to ensure a wide range of constructive feedback. Also, don’t forget to pretest with the CFO (the undisputed king of metrics). If the CFO supports your metrics, few will dare to question your efforts.
• Assess your process — even with the best-of-the-best initiatives there is room for improvement. Develop a formal process to periodically assess user satisfaction and value of information provided. Use the feedback wisely to make your metrics indispensable.

Compelling Format

• Publish in multiple formats — executives and managers are people too, and they don’t all value information presented the same way. Providing your audience with metrics delivered in multiple formats can increase the likelihood they will pay attention. Options include a single-page report, online dashboard, thorough multi-page report, e-mail alert, presentation, or verbal overview. Online dashboards are the leading choice as the user can easily scan the information and drill down on topics of interest. Metrics themselves can be reported individually or grouped. The most common grouping include: a) Scorecards, summarizing key metrics; b) Indexes, combining several key metrics into a single indicator metric; and c) Dashboards, showing all available metrics simultaneously to enable operational decision making
• Include visual charts — compelling data points can quickly disappear in a sea of black ink for all but the most studious of math geeks. When focus needs to be drawn to a particular point, remember that a picture can substitute for 1,000 words (or numbers). When using visual charts, keep them simple, i.e. line or pie charts. If you can’t discern the story a graphic is telling in 10 seconds or less, it’s too complex!
• Provide comparisons — metrics presented without context are useless. For example, stating that the voluntary turnover rate is 26% means very little if I didn’t know that it was four times the industry average or double last period’s.  Provide some benchmark comparison numbers for all major metrics. Those comparisons could include internal period comparisons (last quarter, last year, etc.), observed baseline comparisons (minimum, average, maximum), or external comparisons (industry average, best-in-class, direct competitors average, etc.)
• Use “their words” — HR jargon can distract or confuse your audience. Information published that seeks to influence their behavior needs to exclusively use “their words.” You can identify these words by examining their communications (e-mails, presentations, etc.)
• Relate metrics to a business goal — the reader should make the connection between your metrics and the business goals they impact (e.g. a 27% increase in time-to-fill revenue generating positions directly impacts the Q4 2010 goal of increasing revenue by 30%). You can make the connection clearer by listing the impacted business goal at the top of each chart or with each metric.
• Identify key decisions – the primary purpose of all HR metrics is to improve people-management decision-making. Prioritize your efforts to provide metrics and data relevant to the people-management matters that need the most dramatic improvement. Clearly label all metrics with the relevant decision that must be made so that the reader clearly sees the connection.
• Include red/yellow/green indicators — it’s no secret that attention spans have gotten shorter. Most executives like to scan over metrics quickly, focusing on important areas or those experiencing significant change. By using indicators equivalent to traffic lights (green = no issue, yellow = watch, and red = action required), you can help them hone in quickly. It’s also an excellent idea to place distinctive colored arrows within charts or data that directly point to key data or inflection points.
• Provide action prompts — all metrics should drive action or change behavior. One of the best ways to ensure that the right action is taken is to include prompts at the end of each chart or metric. Prompts would list the top three recommended actions that if taken could resolve the problem or take advantage of the opportunity indicated by the metric.

In the next installment of this series we’ll tackle ensuring visibility for your metrics, keeping them relevant, and emphasizing the dollar impact of HR metrics.

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Recruiting Software as a Service (SaaS) represents a much better value than installed software. Users can eliminate the headache of maintaining their software and vendors can establish Turn-Key Hosted Environments for their customers without rewriting their software. Recruiting firms can share applications and data in real-time with their clients without changing internal networks.

Online recruiting applications that run in your web browser have their benefits. However, a Hosted Recruiting Software Environment (Environments as a Service – EaaS) is a Full Service Managed Windows Desktop with Microsoft Office Professional (Outlook, Word, Excel, Publisher, PowerPoint, and Access) and everything a Recruiting organization needs including all the software, data, and hardware necessary to work from any machine anywhere.

We host everything including all the software for recruiting from all the recruiting software companies. This eliminates your dependency on equipment, maintenance, support, and training. We provide fully managed Windows Desktops including a special understanding of your Recruiting Software applications and Managed Web Browser requirements. With unlimited training, support, and storage we help individuals and businesses to synchronize, backup and access data anywhere in the world.

We Host Any Recruitment Software in a managed desktop including :

• Akken, by Akken, Inc.
• Alex, by Hireability, LLC
• Big Biller, by Top Echelon, Inc.
• Broadlook Suite, by Broadlook Technologies
• Bullhorn, by Bullhorn, Inc.
• CAPS, by BBDP, Inc.
• cBizSoft, by cBizSoft, Inc.
• Copernic Agent, by Copernic, Inc.
• CVTracer, by CVTracer Software, LLC
• eCRM by Hosted Environments
• eGrabber, by eGrabber, Inc.
• Encore, by Cluen Corp
• Gopher, by Blackdog, Inc.
• Hirebridge, by Hirebridge, LLC
• Hiredesk, by Talent Technology
• Humanis, by Questek Systems, Inc.
• iRecruiter, by iCIMS
• JobDiva, by Jobdiva
• MaxHire, by MaxHire Solutions Inc.
• NowHire, by nowHIRE
• OpenHire, by SilkRoad Technology Inc.
• PCRecruiter, by Main Sequence Technologies, Inc.
• Persona, by Applied Systems Technology
• PowerPlace, by PowerPlace Software
• RESUMate, by RESUMate, Inc.
• Safari, by Safari Solutions
• Sendouts Pro, by Sendouts
• StarSearcher/eEmpACT. by Bond, Inc.
• Taleo, by Taleo Corporation
• Talenthook Sphere, by Resource Edge, LLC.
• Tempus Fugit, by Micro J Systems, Inc.
• WinSearch, by Relational Systems, Inc.
  

Hosted Recruiting Software Environments are:

• Web Browser Independent – Browser based applications run in a browser managed by us.
• Bandwidth Independent – Reducing your ISP expenses
• Fully Managed – Updates and Upgrades are applied with your review, and approval.
• Not dependent on local Equipment – Reducing or eliminating client side maintenance and IT costs.

Browser based Recruiting Software Applications are:

• Web Browser Dependent – There may be issues with different browser and web browser versions.
• Bandwidth Dependent – Requiring additional ISP cost to your clients and users
• Semi Managed – You manage your Browser, Equipment and Network when you have issues.
• Dependent on your existing equipment – adding to your existing maintenance and IT costs.

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