Adversity is a great teacher, and the past year will certainly be one of the most adverse and professionally difficult that we will ever experience.

It has been a year of paradoxes and contradictions: unemployment is soaring, but many organizations cannot find the qualified people they need. Rather than restructure work or rethink how work gets done in order to find people, we continue to seek people to work in traditional ways. More people are looking for part-time, temporary, or contract work, yet only a tiny percentage of companies are looking for these type of people. We know that being discourteous to people creates negative branding and is morally questionable especially when so many are unemployed, but we have perhaps never been as discourteous to applicants are we are now. Energy costs have fluctuated wildly and global warming is a topic on every agenda, yet most organizations and people prefer face-to-face relationships rather than asking people to save energy by working from home.

Here are four lessons we should have learned this year.

Lesson #1: Building and maintaining candidate relationships and generating referrals are keys to survival.

Job descriptions should be dead, but I have no doubt that they will live on for a long time. We should all agree that they are not the best, cheapest, or fastest way to attract good people.

In general, you are not going to find the people you need by posting on job boards. The most successful recruiters use social networks, ask employees (and others) for referrals and focus on building talent communities of potential candidates.

Learn from product and service marketing how to do a better job. Watch how IBM or Deloitte advertise and market their professional services. Go for targeted messaging and quality, not volume. Generate candidates from relationships you form using tools such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter and by asking for referrals. Make it a rule of thumb that if you are generating hundreds of responses to a job posting, you are doing something terribly wrong.

Lesson #2: Use targeted, bold marketing and branding to appeal to the types of candidates you want.

Don’t try to appeal to everyone. Focus your marketing messages and media on the type of candidate you are most in need of. KPMG and other organizations target college-age candidates with videos and other media designed to appeal to that age group and to the personalities of the type of candidates who usually want to work for them.

They don’t spend any time or money on marketing that is generic or that appeals to older potential candidates.

The best marketing is always targeted to a specific audience and discourages, although subtly, those who don’t fit the target. Partly this is done through words and pictures and partly by placing the information where the people you are targeting are most likely to see it.

For example, Mercedes advertises on television at the times and on programs where their research shows that highly successful and well off people watch. They place print advertisements in magazines that these types of people read. They do not advertise on Super Bowl nor do they advertise in Reader’s Digest. Targeted marketing requires research, focus, carefully thought-out graphics, and tested writing.

Wording is also key; what you say makes all the difference. If you say and imply that you are seeking only those with very specific backgrounds and qualifications, you will reduce the numbers who apply and improve quality. Even your recruiting web site needs to be worded in a way that is attractive to those you are most anxious to have apply. Cisco Systems has a web site that is appealing to technical professionals but less so to others.

Lesson #3: Do not just use, but embrace, emerging technology

Social networks, video, YouTube, candidate relationship management products, Web 3.0 websites, and SecondLife are all tools that can potentially enlarge your candidate pools, screen candidates, and build relationships.

Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are perhaps the most effective recruiting tools in your arsenal. Video has become king in attracting people, and YouTube is the second-most used search engine after Google itself. If your organization has a recruiting page and/or video, it’s a good start.

Once you start attracting potential candidates, there are many tools to help screen them and communicate with them. CRM tools (Avature is a good example) let you track and communicate with groups of candidates. The most current ATS vendors are also offering this capability and even allow you to link to online profiles in LinkedIn and Facebook. This means candidates do not need a resume.

There are countless email programs, newsletter distribution programs, and other free or inexpensive communication aids that recruiters can use to do a better job letting candidates know where they stand. Even automatic bounce-back responses can be more intelligently written and distributed. A follow-up email could follow the bounce-back and automatically provide the candidate with another touch point.

Lesson #4: Accept change as a way of life

We will not be heading back to the more traditional ways of recruiting, and the contradictions and paradoxes I outlined at the beginning of this article will be with us for a long time. Traditional recruiting skills will be liabilities and will generate little profit.

Everything from face-to-face interviews to onboarding new employees will be more automated and will be done using the Internet. Software applications and mobile technology will dominate the recruiting space. Video interviewing and simulations for selection will become normal within five years.

To be a thriving recruiter you need to focus on building a new mindset that is centered on the acceptance of change as a constant and on taking advantage of technology.

Perhaps the greatest lesson of this year is that we are now at the place where we can use this technology to target our marketing, focus on a smaller number of candidates, allow more direct communication between candidates and hiring managers, and spend more time on raising awareness and marketing key positions using the various technical platforms we have available.

The ability to do this will be seen as strength and will generate returning profit for years to come.

Good people know that even in a recession, they can find another position.

In fact, signs point to increased opportunities for currently employed people with specific skills and experience, and many of your top performers are most likely being actively recruited without your knowledge. As the stock market improves, so do attitudes about hiring. Every day I see signs that companies are starting to hire selected people more aggressively than they have over the past six months. Google has (or had) openings for 200 recruiters; do you wonder why? Facebook is ramping up hiring; wonder why? Even in Silicon Valley, the keenest firms are hiring people even when they don’t really need them!

Facebook, Google, and others continue to hire large numbers of top people for two reasons: first of all, to keep them from the competition. Top people employed by you are not going to be contributing to someone else’s’ success; and second, they are “stockpiling” talent to have it ready when things start growing again, which is already starting to happen.

In many areas, including healthcare, telecommunications, marketing, computer security, and computer engineering, demand remains strong. Biosciences and pharmaceutical companies are hiring, as are the movie and media industries despite layoffs, recessions, and slumping consumer demand.

So what can recruiters so about retention? Isn’t it a fact that once people are hired they are out of your hands? While this may be the case in some firms, I believe for most of us there are several ways to help your organization keep the best people and help yourself by reducing your workload and keeping your internal networks alive.

Most basically, you can make a real difference in any employee’s attitude who you have helped to hire. Employment is about relationships, and the strongest relationships are built on trust, respect, and open communication. As a recruiter, you most likely have an advantage with the employees you helped to hire. You spent time with them, got to know them more deeply than many others in the company, and may have given them advice about accepting offers or on how to deal with an interview. By simply checking in with these folks, you can get a sense of their mood, concerns, and what the issues are they may have with the organization. You may be able to change negative attitudes or to pass on information that might help “save” one of them from leaving.

But here are a few other things that you can do, as well.

Help every employee build a social network. Employees make friends and build relationships that can be strengthened or damaged during stressful times. Many employees stay at an organization because of who they get to work with, and many leave for the same reasons. We all know how powerful social networks such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and even Twitter have become, and companies can use these networks to promote employee interaction and teamwork.

Good organizations can even develop networks for those who have been laid off so that they can help each other and retain the connections they had when employed. By making these kinds of assets available, organizations not only improve their own reputation and brand and help former employees, but also reinforce the loyalty and motivation of employees who are still working.

Encouraging internal blogging, the use of virtual communications tools like SMS or IM, and the use of video conferencing to strengthen networks and extend them globally. Knowledge is a powerful retention tool, and naivety and ignorance can best be combated by sharing of ideas and experiences between people from many different firms.

Encourage constant and candid communication. Silence is the greatest enemy of retention. When management does not update the employees on the financial and business state of the company and when rumors can be counted by the minute, turnover goes up and productivity goes down. While some people (usually the “B” and “C” players) hunker down and hide, the best ones start looking. I can’t tell you how many excellent employees who are highly valued have left their employers because of business uncertainty. No one expects assurances or guarantees; what they hope for is an understanding of trends — are things better, the same, or worse? Are customers leaving? How is sales volume?

Make sure your management team is present, is as upbeat as it can be, and that every member of the executive staff is visible and concerned about every employee.

To maintain the employment relationship, employers have a huge responsibility. First of all they need to clearly know who their best employees are, keep them informed, help them maintain and develop skills, and encourage them to build networks and internal relationships.

None of these things cost much when compared to the cost of recruiting and developing new employees, and none of them are really very hard to do. But, to put them into place does require a change of mindset and a willingness to break (or at least stretch) the usual policies and rules that exist in many organizations. Good HR and good recruiting is all about treating people fairly, not necessarily the same.

Focus on internal placement and movement. Offer your best employees an opportunity to move within the company to jobs that may fit their skills and interests better, if that is possible. It is also a good idea to keep the bureaucracy to a minimum and remove time constraints. Lobby HR and hiring managers to look more intently and more honestly inside the company for talent rather than seeking it from outside. We know that the grass always seems greener somewhere else. It is part of a recruiter’s responsibility to push back and encourage managers to give internal people, even if they lack all the requirements for a job, a chance.

Encourage employees to update their skills all the time. In bad times, employees have time to soak up new information. Education and development are the cheapest retention tools in your arsenal. Locking people into degree or certificate programs is almost a guarantee that they will remain with your firm until they complete the program. Most will be loyal and thankful. And all of them will be better-educated and hopefully more productive employees. This is a big plus for the large organizations and you should be capitalizing on this right now.

But development can also occur through on-the-job development and through many informal networks and conversations. Every employer should encourage employees to share knowledge using social networks or communities of practice, and employers should reward managers who encourage their employees to take classes or take on new responsibilities.

Many employees who leave organizations are simply looking for a bigger challenge or the opportunity to use a new skill or degree. Smart organizations will encourage this and motivate managers to source and hire internally whenever possible and even if it will require a bit of training.

None of this is new or unique. Every recession sees the patterns repeated: the good performers leave, the average and poor hunker down and hide. But the good can be retained through active concern, HR and recruiter involvement and caring, and by proactive HR and employment practices.