Hoffman has transformed his business so that it is now a recruiting firm as much as a PR company--which is what most growth companies will have to be to stay competitive. As Hoffman did, CEOs can start by rethinking what they've done in the past and trying one new idea at a time. The first group of ideas that follows consists of refreshing variations on familiar-but-stale standard tactics, whereas some of the other ideas that follow may seem downright outlandish. But in whatever direction you decide to go to expand your recruiting repertoire, sooner or later you're sure to come to this realization: what you're doing right now isn't nearly enough.
How to Hire: Part One 
Sharpening the old tools
Classified Ads: New Looks, New Locations
When Hoffman did a reverse audit of his hiring practices in 1996, he found that no one he had hired in the previous two years had come to him through newspaper ads, on which he was spending upwards of $20,000. Like Hoffman, many company builders are finding newspaper ads increasingly ineffective: too much clutter and not enough quality response.
Those that still find newspaper ads useful have found that they need to make their ads stand out. Roger Mody of Signal Corp., an information-technology- services provider in Fairfax, Va., uses humor. One recent ad in the Washington Post featured a messy-faced Mody shortly after taking part in a company pie-eating contest, with the tag line "And you should see us on casual day." Other ads have featured stock photos of Wally Cleaver ("Gee whiz, Wally, Signal sure has some swell job opportunities!")
Increasingly, CEOs are widening their advertising efforts to include such nontraditional recruiting media as radio and TV. Recently, Michael Pehl of i-Cube, an IT-consulting-services company in Cambridge, Mass., began running a series of large billboards in the Boston area, including one targeting drivers exiting from Logan Airport that immodestly touts i-Cube as "An Incredible Place to Work." Even at a cost of $10,000 to $15,000 a month (including design fees), the billboards represent quite a bargain in Pehl's view. "We'd pay the same thing to run a tiny one-day ad in the Boston Sunday Globe," he says, "but the billboard sits there for 30 days."
Referral Bonuses: Bribe Strangers, If You Have To
Another long-standing practice that's getting refined in today's labor market is the venerable referral bonus. Paying employees to do your recruiting for you has always been a smart tactic--with the employee acting as a cost-effective quality check--but lately the bounties have been getting larger and more creative. To make sure employees are thinking about the long term when they refer prospects, Brett Brewster of Mitec Controls, a $5.5-million fire- and life-safety company in Norcross, Ga., spreads the bonus payments out: the employee gets half at the referral's 90-day mark and the rest when the referral has been working for six months. As an added dose of accountability, Brewster requires employees to spend time orienting the people they refer, which Brewster says improves the chances of retaining new recruits.
Linda Blaser, a contract recruiter for Exchange Applications, an IT company in Boston, has set up a referral program that gives employees more money for more valuable referrals: $3,000 for most positions and $5,000 for "hot jobs" that Blaser needs to fill with particular urgency. Recently, for every successful referral they made, employees were entered into a drawing for a Caribbean trip. Blaser periodically provides employees with a list of available positions and a fun reminder of the trip, such as a bag of fish-shaped candies. And it's not just Exchange Applications employees who can cash in. The company offers a $2,500 bounty to people outside the company, be they vendors, customers, strangers, even journalists. (You know whom to contact if you're interested.)
If you're growing particularly fast, you may want your referral program to inspire repeat participation. Michael Pehl of i-Cube has developed a program that rewards employees in ongoing quarterly and annual campaigns with progressive and changing incentives. For example, in addition to a $2,000 bonus, anyone making a successful referral for the third quarter of 1998 received a 32-inch TV. And if the candidate started in August, Pehl tacked on a VCR. Annually, anyone making three referrals receives a choice of either two mountain bikes or a year's worth of laundry and housecleaning services. For five hires the choice is between a spa trip and an adventure vacation. And anyone making eight successful referrals for the 1998 calendar year will receive a new Jeep Wrangler. "The most important thing about a recruiting system isn't what you do," says Pehl, "but that you have a framework in place to get people thinking about finding people."
Networking: Passively Schmooze, and You'll Lose.
Travel time needn't be just a chance to catch up on reading the latest books. Whenever Kathi Jones, human- resources and recruiting manager at Aventail Corp., in Seattle, is flying out on business, she arrives at the airport an hour early, and not because of increased security measures. She reads other people's luggage for company tags featuring the names of such big-time competitors as Cisco Systems and Raptor Systems, and takes the opportunity to chat up the owners of the luggage. She also keeps an eye out for folks wearing competitors' T-shirts and baseball caps and engages the sporty travelers in employment-related conversation.
When Barry Brodersen, cofounder and vice-president of Domino Equipment Co., in Clinton, Okla., hears about a particularly good service or construction specialist, he tries to get as much information about that person as he can and looks for opportunities to become acquainted. Once Brodersen pursued a hot service specialist (armed only with the fellow's name, a vague physical description, and the name of his employer), tailgating him for 30 miles. When they stopped, Brodersen introduced himself and said, "Why don't you come work for me?" Now the man is a service manager for Brodersen, whose company installs and services petroleum equipment.
