Even in these tough employment times there is a scarcity of good technical talent for the most important jobs. Unfortunately, traditional recruiting methods do not always work well in staffing technical positions. To reach these valued candidates in a sea of employment clutter, you need to be both creative and on the cutting edge of staffing efforts. One option I recommend is employing the best practices of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SEM (Search Engine Marketing). This is the case because many scientists, engineers and IT professionals are frequent users of such social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

In order to learn the best practices of SEO and SEM, I recommend the SES (Search Engine Strategies) conferences. Every several months across the globe SEO and SEM experts gather at SES to discuss the cutting edge techniques. The next SES show will be held in San Jose, California August 10th to 14th (Please go to http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/sanjose/ for more details).

Forty years ago we placed the first man on the moon. President Kennedy started this Herculean effort not because it was easy, but because it was hard! Major technology efforts are usually very difficult and often have low probabilities of success. Does that mean that we should avoid them?

In order to create more jobs for the United States in the future, employers need to spend a lot more on cultivating technical talent. Instead of taking the easy route of farming out our R&D, scientific, engineering and technical jobs to India and China, we need to refocus our efforts here. For example, a lot more needs to be spent on internal retraining at companies and on assisting the public sector on improving our math, science, engineering and technology educational programs.

When the Japanese first entered the semiconductor market, they didn’t have any proven semiconductor manufacturing expertise. Instead they retrained top manufacturing people from other industries such as steel, who had already proven themselves in manufacturing, but lacked the specific industry acumen. Instead, our multinationals lay off key talent from dying industries while recruiting in their growing ones. We need to learn from the Japanese lessons of the past and place more emphasis on retraining our proven workers for growing new fields. This may be difficult and costly, but the long-term benefits to this country are exponential. If we outsource all of our technical expertise, we will soon be a second-rate power with no ability to manufacture our own planes, tanks and armaments in time of war. We need to act now before it is too late!

Today is my recruitment firm’s 20th birthday. Strategic Search Corporation opened its doors on July 14, 1989, which is also known as Bastille Day or French Independence Day. This was after establishing myself as the top R&D, scientific, engineering and technical recruiter out of 150 recruiters at a large, Chicago-based employment agency. How time flies when you are having fun! One secret to my success is sticking to my knitting of R&D, scientific, engineering and technical recruiting from staff (e.g. mechanical engineer) to C-levels (e.g. CIO). This has helped me to flourish when others have failed.

I want to thank all 79 recruiting clients and candidates who attended  our 20th anniversary party (20 years in business as a recruitment firm) at Lux Bar last Friday, July 10th. It was nice to remove my recruiter hat and enjoy  myself with employment friends. All had a great time including venture capitalist Larry Sucsy venture capitalist with Sucsy, Fischer & Company. Larry and his wife are very photogenic and figure prominently in several of our staffing party photos.

Once again thanks for your support of our recruiting firm over the last 20 years!

Many employers wrongly believe that because of the terrible employment situation, including the 9.5% unemployment rate, they are in the driver’s seat. This is flawed reasoning. This employment situation will turn around. As a result, you need to continue to aggressively recruit key technical talent and follow good recruiting practices.

This is the case because any substandard employment efforts will come back to haunt you later. For example, if you take too long to notify candidates that they are no longer being considered in your interview process, word will spread to other technical people including those engineers, scientists and R&D people that you value most! Technical talent tends to be on the cutting edge of using social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. As a result, these candidates will notify others about how you handled them in your recruitment process. So remember to follow good recruiting practices even during bad employment times!