When the economy becomes such a challenge it become ever more important to think intelligently and not get emotional about sourcing job candidates during this environment. If you invest wisely you can actually jump far ahead of your competition by intelligent marketing and planning whether that is your co-worker or a peer in another company.



Probably one of the best things you can do is take the time to put in a 80/20 rule for your employees if you are a manager. Keep on the top 20% of your most productive recruiters and extend their contracts to show faith during challenging times. Then you will need to look to trim the excess with the bottom 10% and look to even take more out if necessary.

The middle 70% will take more time to decide on who should stay and who should go because this can fluctuate a lot and you have to be careful not to get rid of good employees that could end up becoming your top recruiters. So much of it comes down to pure determination and you have to be aware of who has it, even if they haven't mastered their skill set.

If you don't have managerial responsibilities, you do have personal responsibilities you need to take care of and these same rules apply. You have to analyze with a fine tooth comb what works and what is wasting your time. It is amazing when you map out exactly what your day is filled with and what you actually get done.

Look to train and make improvements daily in your strategies and look for ways to do so after hours when you are not working. It is best to be smart with your efforts and implement methods and test them during the day and re-evaluate daily what is working well and what isn't. You can be amazed what you can change with a few tweaks here and there.

Start planning your hiring needs by the quarter for all of your important job positions that you have to fill. Get your line managers to update their quarterly plans and have them perform tracking just as often to realize what is working well. You have to be very smart with the time you have because this is a great open window to make improvements.

One of the smartest things you can do is look at social media options like Jobs2Web and Entice Labs as avenues to attract the appropriate talent during a difficult economy. This can be a breakthrough for your recruiting in nuturing the right candidates when many recruiters are jumping ship.

These are going to be wise avenues for you to create a lot of money during this time that will save cost per hire and improve your time per hire. All of this can lead to a huge boom when we come out of this economic downfall.