I’ve seen a lot of unique tricks to source and recruit employees with hard-to-find skills, and heard about a lot more, but I have never found one that is so utterly simple and basic in its appeal.

Yes, if you’re Microsoft, you need more than just stock options, great pay, and other high-tech perks to lure and land engineers. Yes, if you want to find and recruit highly-sought-after tech workers, you need something so basic and visceral in its appeal that no one could possibly turn it (or you) down.

Yes, you need bacon.

A bacon cart to recruit engineers

According to Brian Dudley’s business technology blog in the Seattle Times, Microsoft is rolling a bacon cart around town to areas where tech workers congregate and offering free, sizzling bacon and the recruiting tagline, ”Wake up and Smell the Future.” He writes:

To grease the skids for Kinect recruiting, Microsoft’s operating a quirky bacon cart — complete with a riddling bacon hawker — in Seattle tech hubs.

Microsoft is trying to double the size of its Kinect for Windows engineering team in Redmond, from 35 to 70, and it hired ad agency Wexley School for Girls to add some sizzle. Wexley dreamed up the campaign, with the tagline “Wake up and Smell the Future.”

The promo made its debut today in the shadow of Amazon.com headquarters in South Lake Union, where a stream of bacon lovers braved the downpour for free strips of Swinery pepper bacon.

Also free were toppings, including spray cheese, Sriracha, peanut butter, maple syrup and chocolate sauce.”

I don’t know about you, but chocolate sauce on bacon isn’t all that appealing to me, but this Microsoft stunt seems like something that only an avowed and over-the-top bacon lover like Laurie Ruettimann would have dreamed up.

Will this sourcing tactic work? Who knows? One thing is for sure, though: it will surely get Microsoft a lot of PR in what is usually a pretty slow news week.

Read more about it here at the Seattle Times, or this recap from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

I found out that proper etiquette for veterans is to thank them for their service. I have developed the habit of asking if there are any veterans in a group that I am addressing and then gratefully announce: “Thank you for your service.” The journey to get to this place has spanned my career in recruiting.

What a change from my initial experience in working with transitioning veterans. During the Vietnam era, society did not seem to have room for the returning warriors that we sent to protect us. It seemed that the very act of going to war to preserve what America was somehow changed the perception of those patriots – they returned not as heroes, but as second-class citizens. The transition from military to civilian life should be comparable to leaving hell for heaven. However given the ambivalence of arrival back in the “real world”, I suspect many veterans felt like they were still in hell.

In addition to not being welcomed home as heroes, transitioning veterans had a challenging time finding civilian jobs when they returned. A few companies have always seen the value of hiring veterans, but certain sectors of the economy offered little interest in this source of talent. It is great to see that we finally seem to be appreciating the value of the veteran.

About 18 months ago, I was eavesdropping on a conversation between Eric Winegardner and Gerry Crispin. These two staffing thought leaders were discussing how to best serve our military coming home from our current campaigns. Their commitment was admirable. Their initiatives were inspirational. Their passion was contagious. Frankly, I suspect, I was a little envious of their opportunity to serve this great cause. My opportunity to serve was coming; I just did not know it.

A few months later, I was recruited by Sean Kelley, a staffing leader at Microsoft (and former Navy officer) to join a hand-picked virtual staffing team that would impact the manner in which Microsoft would engage the military channel. That team, combined with an employee-initiated group of current and former veterans at Microsoft, forged a unique alliance; we call it We Still Serve.

The We Still Serve portal showcases the great work of our team. Two of our really cool features are a Military Job Decoder and Live Chat. The Military Job Decoder allows a veteran to map their military experience to jobs at Microsoft. The Live Chat feature allows a veteran to connect with a person at Microsoft that shared a military experience. The Microsoft volunteers (current or former veterans) are employees that are passionate about assisting a fellow veteran make the transition of military to civilian life. We built out our community presence on several social media platforms—LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

Our team envisions We Still Serve to be “a sustainable and scalable veteran recruiting model and military outreach program that benefits Microsoft by enabling the business to attract high potential, diverse talent with solid transferrable skills.” But it is really more than a recruiting initiative – I believe We Still Serve is a prototype what talent communities can become—the merger of affinity groups and staffing. The teaming of committed colleagues around an initiative that share a common vision and mission, allowing each member to use their respective gifts and abilities, is the essence of community.

My experience with We Still Serve has been eye opening. Not only have I experienced true community, I have also seen honor and respect awarded to a group that is most deserving. It has taken three or four decades to reach a point where we can separate war from the warrior; the “cause” from the combatant; and politics from the people who risk their lives to serve our great nation. My hope is as we celebrate Veterans Day, we remember to say – thank you for your service.

Strategy is goal + why + how. This tells you both what to do and what not to do.

During Scott’s presentation today, he drew out a diagram on sourcing strategy that can help plot how to delegate one’s time and thus determine these strategies to accomplish company goals. He shared, “All hires are not created equal – you cannot recruit A players in all positions.” Based on his diagram, it is important to assess needs volume as it relates to the importance to the business of filling various positions:

Where do sourcers come into play in working this model? Prioritization of projects – and this comes from having dialogue with the recruiters who own the reqs AS WELL AS the hiring managers who need the headcount.

Additionally, Pitasky discussed the importance of deciding when it is appropriate to outsource some parts of the recruiting process. Again – the answer to this will never be the same for everyone. He said, “Decide what you’re really good at as well as what is really important for you to own.”  He did caution against using cost alone to make these determinations – his reasoning for this was two-fold. The convenience of partnering with an external resource may cost you your competitive advantage in the long run. As well, keeping things in-house may also cause your organization to miss out on the expertise that an external recruiting professional could offer. Again – each company must make these decisions for themselves based on their own unique needs. In Microsoft’s case, according to Pitasky, he never wants to give up all of the sourcing process because of the importance of pipelining talent – however, he certainly is happy to develop strategic partnerships with contingent recruiting professionals for selected projects.

Remember: an A player at one company may not be an A player at another company. This is important to consider when developing your company’s sourcing strategy – and why it is crucial to find what works for your unique needs and not simply create a carbon copy of someone else’s strategy. Develop your own path to success in hiring!

There is a downside to our anonymity. I invite you to step into the experience of a person that stumbles over one of our jobs.

Imagine you are at work. You are researching a special project. You put your keywords in your favorite search engine; as you skim the results in Bing you notice a job advertisement from a competitor. There staring you in the face is the seemingly perfect job. You press the link and read the job description. Many questions come to mind. You press the link that says “apply” to see if your questions can be answered and to further investigate the opportunity. You are directed to an electronic form and offers you the opportunity apply for the job. You think to yourself—do I have time to apply for this job? What if my boss walks by? You wonder how long can an application process take—you conclude that this is the 21st century and it should only take a few minutes. 30 minutes later, you are still being asked questions about your life history. You are feeling uneasy since you are at work. A colleague walks by and you quickly close the window on the screen in order to protect your privacy. You have just wasted 30 minutes of your life. And your competitor has just lost a great opportunity to meet you.

The above scenario is played out daily. This is one of the byproducts of the amazing technology age—prospects for our opportunities become frustrated with our process and drop out of our application process. Before you dismiss this as isolated, Gerry & Mark at CareerXroads have some research that suggests that not completing the application process can occur over 60% of the time. If you think about it, it is not the active job seeker that drops out of the application process, but a more passive person who is just sort of kicking tires. And if you are like me, it is that passive prospect that I need because the number of active candidates do not meet my numerical or quality requirements need to fulfill my hiring objectives.

I believe we can use technology to reverse this trend of passive prospects dropping out of an application process. The solution isn’t just shortening the application process (although, I am in favor or that); we can use technology to engage is conversations with these passive prospects. I believe that we can and should use technology to rehumanize sourcing and recruiting.

At Microsoft, we are Employing Talent Communities to Rehumanize the Recruiting Process. I will discuss our approach at Sourcecon 2010. I invite you to be part of the presentation and conversation. I am the last speaker on Monday, so as you plan your departure from SourceCon, take a later flight and please join me.