Although the full impact of the new UK age discrimination legislation is unclear, there is one obvious – and feasible – requirement: defensible record-keeping and reporting. If and when the time arrives to prove compliance, navigating a messy paper trail will expose more risk and vulnerability.

In that light, the results of our new research on the careers sites of the FTSE 100 companies, Careers Site Recruiting in the FTSE 100 Companies: A Missed Opportunity, are all the more significant.

Nearly half of the FTSE 100 companies have no apparent recruitment management technology – the core of any record-keeping and reporting system. They have corporate websites, corporate careers sites, post job positions online…and yet they receive applications via emailed CVs.

Managing a recruitment process with candidate data stored on email CVs is not far afield from file cabinets of paper CVs. In fact, it may be worse. It is so much easier for candidates to submit CVs by email, rather than postal mail. This leads to increased volume.

Lacking end-to-end recruitment technology, these companies miss out on automated support for online pre-screening, skills-based selection, and proactive recruitment from the company’s own talent pool. We wonder how companies which have no technology in place to manage their recruitment processes will demonstrate their compliance to the recruitment methods inherent in the new legislation.

Sourcing and recruitment advertising costs consume high percentages of HR staffing budgets. With increasing pressure on a decreasing talent supply, getting good results from your sourcing investments looms even larger.

Newly released is an interesting and extensive ERE Media and Classified Intelligence research report ($495) that’s based on a survey of 350 recruiters across the United States. The report title tells much of the story: Job Sites Up, Print Going Down: Recruiters Rate Advertising Effectiveness. According to the survey, employee referrals remain a top source of choice; newspapers are quickly losing favor.

Where have the recruitment ad dollars been spent in the past, and what changes are expected for budget allocation? Here the report also offers good info:

As you set your own budgets for next year’s recruitment advertising, you can use this research to get a broader view of source effectiveness and payback expectations. Then you can benchmark against your own plans. Each program should be evaluated on its merit for your organization. If, for instance, employee referrals rank high – be sure that your employee referral program is optimized. None of these sources will be effective for you without ongoing monitoring and analysis.

It’s not especially surprising when Jobster CEO, Jason Goldberg discusses social networks in his recent industry conference presentation, The Future of Hiring Technology. Jobster is on the forefront of applying Web 2.0 to the process of recruitment as part of its vision for both the present and future. But social networks are also a big topic in the mainstream business press, such as in this series of BusinessWeek articles.

We’re going to take a deeper dive on using social networks for improved sourcing and talent acquisition in our upcoming free webcast, Who Do You Know? Sourcing in a Networked World on Wednesday, October 11 at 8:00 a.m. PT (11:00 a.m. ET). You’ll hear from Taleo Research, Jobster, and Nike on how to use social networks to boost your sourcing strategies, work your connections, and recruit top talent.

Is it still a revolution when the media standard Financial Times comments on changes in recruiting? In the FT article “Process of looking for staff undergoes a revolution” author Richard Donkin writes:

“…changes occurring in recruitment today, not to mention the broader labour market, are more significant than those arising in the traditional economic cycle.”

This FT piece looks at how two recruitment services companies have changed their business models to adapt. Donkin concludes “The days of treating the supply of labour like any utility are coming to an end.” We disagree. We think those days already came to an end.

Build a relationship with a target audience first. Now that you’ve got their attention and loyalty, post job opportunities in front of them?

In a kind of reverse engineering, successful niche blogs are launching revenue-producing job board add-ons. A Red Herring magazine article cites GigaOm, the blogging network started by former Business 2.0 writer Om Malik, as the fifth niche job site to come from a blogger. It also references job boards from blogs TechCrunch (with the catchy job site name CrunchBoard), 37 Signals, Alarm:Clock, and Paid Content. Doubtless, there are more…or will be.

As the lines blur between direct and indirect sourcing methods, the fight is on for a minute – no, for moments – of mindshare from potential candidates with like minds. Similar to contextually placed paid ads in search engines, all audiences are fair game.

It’s always gratifying when a study proves what you intuitively know. Professors from Florida State University and Auburn University used a technique called meta-analysis to mathematically combine the findings of 92 previous studies covering 19,319 organizations published since the mid-1980s.

They produced the study, How Much Do High-Performance Work Practices Matter? A Meta-Analysis of Their Effects on Organizational Performance, published in the autumn issue of Personnel Psychology.

Key Conclusions:

• When a company emphasizes human resource activities such as incentive pay and flextime, it can enjoy a 10 to 20 percent improvement in employee retention, employee productivity, profitability and stock price.

• Conversely, companies which cut spending on human resource programs can expect to see their bottom line shrink by up to 20 percent.

• Performance improvements are stronger when companies take a systematic approach to human resources rather than implementing one or two practices.

• When companies cut their HR budgets—which was often the first place to save dollars when the economy took a slide—it had a knockdown effect on retention, productivity, profitability, and stock price.

Study co-author and Lowder Eminent Scholar at Auburn University, Dave Ketchen said: “Over the last 25 years, corporate America has debated whether the human resources function adds value or if it is just a necessary evil. Our results show that negative images of human resource managers miss the mark. Skilled HR managers can make the difference between a company making a profit or losing money.”

Talent drives performance. Talent management matters.

Retention rates and turnover are flipsides of the same issue. Are you keeping the people you’ve hired? Or are you constantly replacing them?

Mercer Human Resource Consulting’s China Employee Attraction and Retention Survey is based on more than 100 companies throughout China and Hong Kong. These locations are experiencing alarming rates of turnover. Average tenure for 25-35 year olds—the age group targeted most by multinational companies—fell from an average of 3 to 5 years in 2004 to just 1 to 2 years in 2005. Although the rates for your organization may not be this extreme, it’s instructive to review the research.

The report’s findings reinforce the basics: the salary and benefits package is very important, closely followed by career development opportunities.

Take a look at your own organizations, wherever they are located. With all the work you are doing on hiring new talent, what methods are in place for keeping them?

There was so much great information shared in today’s “Recruiting in Emerging Markets” webcast sponsored by Taleo. Pete Engardio of BusinessWeek provided an overview of each country’s talent landscape, complemented by “feet on the street” insights from Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu and JPMorgan Chase.

The challenges of working in countries with enormous populations, trying to match specific skillsets to demand (amid environments with high turnover) came through clearly. While striving for quality, the necessity of consistent processes for managing increasing quantity is evident in the one-year volume increase we have seen across the Taleo customer base:

There’s a lot to learn —from location-specific sourcing tactics to unusual retention strategies—from these insights about India and China. If you missed it, watch for the archived presentation.

The recent Fortune magazine piece, Why India will overtake China, explores the current economic environments of both geographic giants. The “Plugged In: Analysis” article outlines the strengths of China:

“China has higher literacy and better infrastructure. It takes a month to start a business in China, and three in India. China has more savings, less debt and less poverty.”

Then counters with a contrary view of India:

“But in important ways, India's economic software is superior. India's banks report about 10 percent non-performing loans; China admits to 20 percent and the true figure could be double that. India's capital markets work the way they should; China's are a rigged casino. India has more engineers and scientists; its domestic entrepreneurs have made a bigger mark.”

Interesting? Yes. Definitive? No. Both China and India along with a number of smaller AsiaPac countries are now significant players in global business. Companies are increasingly tapping their local workforces to staff expanding office and manufacturing locations. Although the dynamics are different, each country presents talent management challenges, especially in recruiting.

Whether one country surpasses the other seems academic. The reality is simpler. If your organization is now—or plans to be—involved in India and China, you need to get savvy about recruiting in those talent markets.

Take advantage of this opportunity to get expert advice on developing recruiting strategies to succeed in China and India from Judy Panagakos of JPMorgan Chase, Frank Wittenauer of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, Pete Engardio of BusinessWeek, and Don Chun of Taleo in the upcoming Taleo webcast, Recruiting in Emerging Markets on Thursday, September 7.