Goliath Returns To Fight Small Business...

The trend of giant corporations comes and goes. In the mid 90's, huge corporations had retreated. By 1996 a full quarter of IBM's workforce disappeared when they laid-off 122,000 employees inside of five years. For the first time in its history, Boeing operated with a majority of its work done by contracting out 52 percent of its work because it couldn't manage its size. Continental, Pan Am and Midway, airlines with great traditions and a history of innovation, split up due to bankruptcy. Shareholders demanded blue chips do more with less. Corporate boards sought automation to replace workers and entrepreneurs were outsmarting their bloated foes.

Indeed, small start-ups were in high fashion. Dozens of disk-drive start-ups blossomed along with biotech start-ups and of course there were the dot.com's. Large service companies were viewed as less responsive and the best talent sought quick and nimble businesses like eBay and Yahoo. Workers were attracted by the upswing potential of an IPO and they wanted to take more risk. Everyone sought a ground floor opportunity. The era of the Goliath Corporation was ending.

Gigantic corporations have returned. An uptick in mergers and acquisitions is evidence that conglomerate partnerships will weed out mid-sized companies and produce huge corporate businesses. Last week Dell Inc. said it would buy Perot Systems Corp. for $3.9 billion, Oracle Corp. is closing a $7.4 billion deal for computer server and software maker Sun Microsystems Inc., and today Xerox will acquire ACS for about $6.4 billion.

These big companies have tons of resources that will allow them to emerge from the downturn stronger. Recruiting and retention efforts will focus on placing internal candidates first; to fulfill their succession plans and increase the satisfaction of its workforce. Large talent acquisition budgets will allow their internal recruiters to advertise open positions to large targeted demographic pools of candidates and large job fairs will lure crowds of job seekers that will fill out applications and compete for job openings. Large companies benefit from the fact that risk is not as attractive as it was in the late 90's.

What resources will small business have to compete for talent in the global economic recovery? The biggest advantage is that small (50 to 250 employee organizations) don't have to deal with the endless standardization and resoundingly-slow procedures that large companies mandate in their hire process. Corporate bureaucracy is real and is a huge disadvantage that doesn't hinder small firms. The consequences include great candidates that die on vine waiting for feedback on their resume or their interview results. Small companies can make decisions and actually put people to work without a comity reviewing the Meyers-Briggs personality profile of a candidate.

Smaller companies can compete for talent by using niche job boards or targeted recruiting firms. Since it takes time to review large stacks of resumes, the targeted approach reduces the time to compile a short list and professional recruiters actually manage schedules, calls, and meetings for their clients. Smaller firms should start building a pipeline of candidates that they can hire now while their Goliath counterparts are moving at the speed of molasses to hire fresh talent!

It's an Employers' Market. Ugh!

The Bureau of Labor Statistics is scheduled to release The Employment Situation for July 2009 on August 7th and the weekly jobless claims data is expected to show further decline giving those few organizations that are adding staff more confidence than ever to throw professionalism out the window.

Remember how employers had to behave during the dot com bull market when employee's were hard to find? Organizations across the country decided to develop an action plan for ethical practices in the hiring process when one was not already in place. This quick feedback and consistent communication made most transactions pleasant or at least polite.

Now that corporate America is flooded with resumes and operates in an environment of government audits and OFCCP compliance on their hiring practices, the trend of hiring one select candidate and treating the rest of the candidate pool with only the minimum amount of respect required by the federal government will continue.

One recent example includes a fortune 100 company that asked a select candidate pool to complete exhausting screening application where successful applicants were invited for an hour plus teleconference interview. So far, so good. The top two candidates were then invited for an on-sight interview with the hire manager and other staff. This too is in-line with a professional process. However, this was a four hour interview. After both of the four hour interviews, neither candidate was selected, the organization re-posted the position, and failed to return phone calls or emails from the original candidates! Five weeks later, the organization delivered an electronic notification that the position had been filled.

Forward looking organizations that recognize the long term value of professional business communication with respect to adding staff will be rewarded when the resume flood dries up. However, growing federal contractors don't follow that type of thinking. They have secure contracts 5, 7, even 10 years down the road and they have them with option years too. Yet, hiring organizations that act with arrogance and blatant disrespect, just because they happen to be growing in this down marked, would benefit from some sole searching and a small dose of modesty.

On the other hand, I congratulate organizations that have implemented traditional practices of explaining their decisions to top candidates and leaving doors open for the future. After all, the candidates that aren't a perfect fit today may very well be the perfect fit tomorrow.

I mean, I get it... It is an Employers' Market. But companies that act like it's a candidates market, will win when the tables turn. The tables always turn. They always have.