Workplace Romances – Jared Woods

Recruiting hearts, not minds

// November 26th, 2009 // 3 Comments » // Employment Branding

What used to be called “the war for talent” isn’t far from starting up again. The terminology is misleading, because wars have an end, and this is now a permanent market condition. There’s no war to be won – talent is scarce. Whether it’s graduates or experienced hires, your skills pool is shrinking, and you’re going to have to be more flexible, proactive and attractive to snare the people who’ll deliver your future.

Traditional sourcing methods are still delivering good candidates, everyone’s talking about social media and its “potential” as a sourcing tool, newspaper ads (like the newspapers themselves) are dwindling, and more and more people are looking at referrals, alumni programs and human-contact sourcing as viable, cost effective alternatives.

As the talent pool shrinks, there are seemingly two schools of thought about how to tackle the market: (a) talent as an acquired commercial asset and (b) talent as an investment in human potential. Each has its strengths and ROI, and each is viable as a resourcing business model. One recognises contribution to the bottom line, and one is more about contribution to the business culture.

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Is It Your Job To Protect Employees From Themselves?

// October 13th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Internal Communications

There’s some interesting discussion going on (at least in-house where I work) about how far a company should regulate social media usage. I’ve done a lot of research on industry practice and written a couple of position papers for the board on how we should approach this, as I believe it’s firmly attached to our EVP. In my opinion, you can’t support the free exchange of ideas and foster a culture of teamwork and collaboration, then muzzle people who dare to talk about something other than work. And luckily, the board has agreed.

However, this raises another question. We know (from sites such as Lamebook) that people are becoming more likely to share content which reflects badly on either themselves or the company on social networking sites. We’ve all seen the stories of people fired for criticising employers online. Does our duty of care as an employer extend to educating staff on how to protect their online reputations, and by extension, our own?

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Generating Names Or Making Connections?

// September 23rd, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Employment Branding, Recruitment Marketing

This morning, I saw an email offering to teach recruiters how to identify talent using Facebook, Twitter and a few other social networks, by doing site x-rays for search terms. It’s not a bad way to identify what people do for a job, assuming they’ve put that in their information. Here’s my problem – those people aren’t candidates. They aren’t looking for you. And in finding (and potentially approaching) them through a technological means, are you putitng your brand at risk?

Internal recruiters are the mouthpiece of a brand, not just an opportunity. When you’re in-house , your job isn’t just to fill a role, but to add to an existing team that’s already a part of your business. There’s a fundamental difference between agency recruiting and in-house recruiting. In house, you see your mistakes every day. Your bad placements are there, being performance managed or managed out, and it sticks to your reputation. No one within the business remembers the names of their agency recruiters with the same tenacity that they remember the guys sitting down the hall.
Which means in-house, you’re recruiting for a culture, not just the job itself. You know the culture better than anyone else, and so it’s a massive part of what you’re looking for. You know the fit you need for the team. You know your value proposition. And you know your brand, and how valuable that is in market, because it’s what gets people to love you, or leave you.

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The Key To Recruiting on Twitter

// September 22nd, 2009 // No Comments » // Recruitment Marketing

As mass-media outlets everywhere start to talk about (or ridicule) Twitter, it’s interesting to watch the marketing applications begin. Whether it’s auto DMs (which can be annoying) or just the sell-sell-sell of repeated postings, the desire for people to use Twitter to generate an income, a sale or a purchase is becoming really keen. And given the space I work in, it’s hardly surprising that I can see recruiters moving in for the kill.
So here’s a tip. Just a little one. Stay human.

Twitter at its best is about interpersonal connection. I chuckle whenever I read that Twitter, Facebook et al are about narcissism. It’s not narcissism to believe that you have an opinion worth sharing. Five minutes interacting on Twitter shows you that Twitter’s real value isn’t about broadcasting. It’s about connecting, about finding a balance between listening and talking. To broadcast on Twitter is to tacitly assume that your audience has nothing to say of interest to you. Don’t we already have enough websites that can do that?

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Want To Engage Gen Y? Start By Calling Them Something Else

// September 22nd, 2009 // No Comments » // Employment Branding, Recruitment Marketing

I’ve spent this week introducing our managers to our graduate marketing program. It’s a program that has been hand-built by me and a very dedicated team of designers and developers. It’s frankly awesome.
In nearly every meeting, these managers (who are largely technical types) have asked if the way we communicate – personal, informal, friendly – is a “Gen Y thing”. Because, you know, Gen Y love that stuff. And at every opportunity, I’ve taken pains to point out that no, it isn’t. It’s a people thing.
The people we want (and I suspect this applied to you too) don’t like being generalised. They don’t like being categorised. They like being individuals. They like having this recognised, too. People respond well to being singled out for the things they pride themselves on. In other words, people respond well to being recognised as a person.
Those Generation Y’s that managers are always complaining about have a reasonable point to make. As long as you keep seeing them as a generation, and not as individuals, you’re alienating them. Every person within generation Y has the same level of individuality in communication style, work preference and background as anyone else. They are as susceptible to cold, hurt, excitement, honesty and fear as anyone else.
Generations are a way of making broad classifications. They are a way of seeing. And every way of seeing, is a way of not seeing. If you continue to define people by their generation, you paint them with the ‘average’ of their collective public perception. You brand them based on the collective psychological impression the chronological group they belong to has given you. In short, you marginalise their humanity right from the start.
Need something to call your new graduates? Try their names.

Building The Brand In 140 Characters Or Less

// September 21st, 2009 // No Comments » // Employment Branding

Lots of people (including me, in previous posts) have been talking about using online social networking for recruitment and talent sourcing. It’s a hot-button issue in an industry that loves to exploit potential new media to find candidates. Tell a recruiter there could be candidates (and commissions) in it, and odds are, they’ll throw themselves at it with the gusto and carelessness I usually display at All-You-Can-Eat Ribs night.

I’m from the employer brand school of thinking. All of our talent acquisition strategies are demonstrably linked to our corporate core values and our employer value proposition. We don’t spam mailing lists and we don’t advertise jobs that don’t exist. We take a community approach to employee referrals and alumni that’s quickly moving into the online space. I still think press presence is part of the toolkit for the right roles. I think getting them in the door is easier than keeping them engaged, in love and moving forward once they’re part of the company. And, as I’ve said before, I believe that the more people get involved in communicating for the brand, the more likely the wheels are to fall off.

Brands live and die on their ability to transfer emotion. That ability is the thing that makes you feel what someone else feels. It’s the moment when looking at a Coke poster makes you think you’d be happier (and more like the people in the advert) with a Coke. So you buy one. And you don’t ever think about whether you were as happy as the people on the poster were, because you’re going about your life, drinking a Coke.

Where this becomes a problem for brands (and while I’m not just talking about employer brands, it’s where my head’s at) is that it’s really hard to transfer emotion in small bites.

Video is arguably the best single-direction method to transfer emotion from one human being to another. It’s the reason we watch an unprecedented amount of online video, DVDs, films and downloaded TV shows. Interactions with real people online are also entertaining and can certainly help to solidify opinions around a particular voice. (One only has to look at the stand-up comics joking away on twitter and the subsequent responses to see how quickly single-voice brands can spread.) However, as the richness of content goes down, so to does emotional transfer. And 140 characters is about as content-poor as you can get. It’s text, often used to promote a link or show a picture, usually as a response to other conversations.

How do you paint the employer brand, the physical, emotional and psychological experience of working for a company, in 140 characters? And how do you do it in such a way that it’s going to impact and resonate with your intended audience?

The three R’s. Relevance, richness, response.

By relevance I mean talk the language of your tribe. Talk about things that excite them, not just about what jobs you have open. Introduce team members, talk about what’s happening in the real world. And talk about it the way you’d want to hear about it – in a way that stimulates conversation.

Richness refers to the type of conversation you have. Promote links people will find useful. Demonstrate an understanding of your followers by giving them content they’ll like. Talk to them, not at them. And talk to them like a human, a person who reacts and emotes and empathises and believes in a vision. There are enough bots out there without you becoming one for want of a personality.

Response means just that. Become part of the conversation. Forge a dialogue between your brand and your followers/fans/viewers/audience. Watch the discussions between your people and get involved. Talk to the issue and talk to the people. Share your views, listen to arguments, learn more and be part of the discussions.

It’s not a science – after all, we’re talking about people, who can be emotional, irrational, over-hasty and ignorant. If you want your brand to be a part of the new online environment, posting links to your open jobs isn’t a strategy.  Make your brand a voice, a leader, a pundit in the industry (whatever industry that is) and the right people will find you.

Read more about this in Andrew Weir’s great post about emotion.

Your Candidates Have Brains

// September 21st, 2009 // No Comments » // Employment Branding, Recruitment Marketing

It’s seen as something as a disadvantage by recruiters that the real superstar potential hires for any role are smart, savvy and often analytical. It makes them harder to sell on a story which isn’t backed up by a reality. I’m not having a go at recruiters – most salespeople would probably prefer an audience that didn’t require quite so much truth and hard work to convince.
And therein lies the problem.
Having a really good employer brand doesn’t work unless it’s true. Unless it’s honest. Unless you can prove it.
The greatest recruiter I know brought me into this job, and when she left, a party was held. The CEO made a speech, praising her efforts in building an internal recruitment function of nearly 30 people in three years. Towards the end of his speech, he said “Sometimes the business has had to reach in order to meet the expectation you’ve created. Your passion for working here is evident in how you talk about the business when we go to market.”
As nice a message as this is from your CEO when you leave, it paints a real problem. If the message is better than the reality, you’re creating an expectation in market that you can’t meet. It’s an expectation that will see candidates leave quickly once they realize the story isn’t going to come true.Not only will they leave ; they’ll tell their friends and colleagues how badly you delivered, and you’ll have to work progressively harder to get the right people.
If you’re going to talk to people who are interested in working for you, why not tell them the truth? Not Marketing’s truth, but the real, actual truth. Tell them the warts-and-all side of the job. Because (and this is provable across nearly every market) people remember the honesty. Respect the intelligence and observational power of your candidates, and you’ll see them become long-term employees.

How To Build Your Freelancer Brand

// September 21st, 2009 // No Comments » // Career Development

Whether you’re an established freelancer or just starting out, your reputation is your most important asset when it comes to winning work. Being able to meet the brief for a client is important too, but it’s your reputation that gets you invited to heat the brief in the first place.
In an increasingly connected business community, there are three key strategies to pursue when building your brand and your reputation. Each of these strategies leads to engaging a particular psychological pillar. Using all three gives you an edge when pitching for work, and helps you create a personality for your business.

One: Be Proud.

Showcasing your work is the key to engaging with clients. Unless you’re in a local trades arena, your client base wants to see and hear what you’ve done. More importantly, they want to hear if it worked. Concise, demonstrative results appeal very strongly to the reason-driven side of business arguments. Prove what you do works, and you’ve demonstrated capability and understanding of the commercial realities of your clients’ business.

Two: Align Your Values (and theirs).

Your brand has values. Every brand has values. The values are your tenets, the pillars that hold up your business philosophy. Whether your philosophy is innovation or systemic discipline or expression, it’s supported by a values argument. Embrace those values as a tool to win work from like minded clients.
If you’re generous with your intellectual property, demonstrate it to clients. If you’re ethically opposed to sweatshops, ensure this is a visible part of what you’re about. It helps you attract clients who will work well with you, and give clients who aren’t aligned to your values plenty of opprtunity to either self-select out or raise concerns. And because the right clients make a world of difference to how well your business comes out, this is important. This also satisfies a psychological construct around doing business with the “right” kind of people.

Three: Give the people more of what they want.

When a client is happy with the work you’ve done, spend time asking them why. Get measureble business outcomes from your clients and use the data that isn’t sensitive to promote your business. Research among your existing clients not only leads to more work from them, but also more referrals and a better reputation outside your marketing work.
Check regularly with your clients. Ask them what they liked most and disliked most about your service. Fix the bad and enhace the good, and you’re creating a perception that you’re receptive and flexible. You’re demonstrating to clients that their opinion as a client matters to you. This helps build trust and rapport. It also fills the emotional, human side of decision making, by showing clients you see them as allies, not adversaries or a necessary evil.
These aren’t instant recipies for success, but they go a long way to solidifying your brand

Pictionary And Your Employer Brand

// September 21st, 2009 // No Comments » // Employment Branding

Pictionary is a great game. For those who don’t know, it involves a team of at least two people. One draws on a pad in an attempt to define a concept/thing and the other has to guess what it is. The words come off pre-set cards, and guessing correctly moves you around a board.
The reason Pictionary is such a great game is that it relies on finding common ground with your team mate to explain your ideas. The different ways peolle explain the same ideas make the game lots of fun. Often, the results of missed mental connections can be hilarious, frustrating and very entertaining.
So here’s three questions for you about the way you advertise your employer brand that came from my Pictionary game on Saturday.

1. Could you communicate what it’s like to work for your company without any words at all?
2. If husbands and wives and friends and lovers are on such different wavelengths, how do you know that they see what you see?
3. If imagery an visual story telling is faster, more emotive and more easily absorbed than text, what is your current visual identity saying about you as an employer, or a business, or an ethos?

There aren’t any right answers to these questions. Just as there aren’t right answers to questions about what to wear or say or eat. However, it’s important to think about what your recruitment and employment brand is saying outside of the words you use.

Make Them Feel Lucky – Customer Service Tips

// September 21st, 2009 // No Comments » // Branding

Recently, I was talking about a great customer service experience with a friend of mine. I’d had one of those exceptional service moments that you walk away from a little happier with the world While we were talking, in response to my story of literally awesome service, he said “Geez, you were lucky you picked a good (insert business here).”
I think this is true. I also think it’s something we should be striving for more often.
Seth Godin talks a lot about being remarkable. I think this points people in the right direction, but leaves the frame of reference up to the consumer. Every interaction with a client or customer is an experience where you are judged. Maybe it’s against expectation, or a competitor, or even against your track record. What’s important is that, to grow your business (whatever it is) you need to meet that expectation, and throw in a little something special.
Culturally this can be a challenge for you and your people. It’s easy to point to a track record of undistinguished service as profitable. It’s easy to compare yourself favourably to your competitors or deride customer expectations as unreasonable. It’s much harder to convince managers and employees that achieving a demanding, unrealistic and subjective goal is much better.
I liken it to videogames. It’s easy to beat a videogame on ‘easy’. More often than not, you get the same storyline and are treated to the same dynamics. What’s missing is the challenge, and the reward that you overcame a task which is more difficult than you were used to.

The two things that customers really remember from any interaction are service and price. Not everyone can be competitive on price. Being competitive with your service level is a choice to build your business around happier, more loyal customers.
Make people feel lucky they deal with you, and they’ll keep coming back.