// August 19th, 2010 // No Comments » // Employment Branding
Recently, I had a discussion with Riges Younan about his take on sourcing, recruitment and social media. Luckily, I had a camera with me, so you can now watch that discussion (or at least his side of it) as a video.
HR In Black And White – Riges Younan from Jared Woods on Vimeo.
// August 13th, 2010 // 3 Comments » // Employment Branding
There’s an old saying that applies to social media. “If all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail.” For those of us who have been swimming in the social media pool for a while, it’s easy to start thinking it’s a silver bullet. And maybe it is. Except that even silver bullets need to be well-aimed and fired from a gun that works.
Using online social networks as a channel for attracting and engaging talent is a great idea. It’s a great idea because it allows you to communicate in real-time with an opt-in talent pool. It allows you to stand up as part of the tribe, as a voice worth hearing in your industry. And it allows you to tell the story of your brand, your employment experience, and amplify the messages you want to send about your culture. Most other media, such as newspapers, videos and careers events, let you do that too. The only real difference is that online social platforms give your audience a voice to converse with you, too. The democratic nature of response-focused online media gives your brand greater access to feedback and conversation.
Being able to use social media to engage people isn’t any different than being able to talk at a real-life networking event, or present on a stage, or do phone-screens for candidates. Being able to communicate on social media requires two things – knowing who you are, and knowing how to speak. And while it’s pretty easy to learn how to speak using social media’s pantheon of tools (there are certainly enough blogs, video tutorials, articles and resources out there), it’s a lot harder to know who you are and how to talk to people as a brand.
To acquire the knowledge of who you are, you need to rely on the principles and values that underpin your brand. Your tone of voice, your communication style, the content, frequency and responsiveness are all things that descend from your brand. If yours is a brand that is friendly, approachable, picky about getting the details right and wants to add value, then those are the defining traits of your brand on social media. The platform doesn’t change the personality of your brand.
So much of what’s discussed in social recruiting applies to recruiting skills in general. Good communication, timely response, the ability to identify talent amidst the chaff – these are recruiting skills, not social media skills. You wouldn’t hire a Job Board Expert to teach you how to post a job on SEEK. You’d try yourself, and if you got stuck, you’d ask people you know (usually someone who’s naturally aligned to this sort of thing) and maybe attend a one-off training course with SEEK. You wouldn’t hire an expert just to show you how to use one channel – you hire an expert to show you how to apply the brand to all your channels. That’s where brand agencies and internal employer marketing teams come in – here’s the message, regardless of the place you want to shout it from.
A social recruiting expert will teach you the tools, which you can learn for free and trial for yourself without them. A social recruiting expert can show you how Twitter works, and show you the mistakes they’ve made. However, a social recruiting expert can’t tell you who you are, and how to accurately and authentically create the brand using social media as an additional channel. They can show you how to hold a guitar, but not how to write music.
If you’re ready to explore social media to find and engage talent, because you have a strong brand, a well-defined value proposition and a good idea of how to appeal to your prospects, then you don’t need a social recruiting expert to show you how to do that. And if you don’t have those things, all the social recruiting expertise in the world won’t help you find out who you are and help you connect with the talent you need.
// August 11th, 2010 // 1 Comment » // Employment Branding
I’ve been engaged recently to be a ‘secret shopper’ for some friends. I’ve been applying for jobs through their corporate websites, and reporting to them on the resulting experience as a candidate. In some of those cases, I’ve done phone interviews as well, to skills test the internal recruiters. It’s been rather fun being a mystery candidate and evaluating the types of conversations and experiences everyday applicants are exposed to.
One of the things that struck me regularly was the utter lack of emotion in these calls. I rarely felt like I was talking to a person, let alone a brand ambassador for the employment experience. Often these calls were very one sided. “Tell us about you, and if you make it to interview, you can ask us some questions then.” In some cases (two recruiters in particular, both from the same company) the calls were very authoritarian. There was a clear sense of reading questions off an interview guide, of a rigid adherence to process that forbade any humanity sneaking in. I was literally told by one recruiter that he didn’t meed more information about my job history – a yes or no answer would do.
In a couple of cases, I was ‘set up’ as a passive target, a possible headhunt. One of these was even for a company that I’d already ‘applied’ for, and a different recruiter contacted me to sound me out. They used the same script they use for applicant-based recruitment, right down to “Where did you hear about this opportunity?” It will suffice to say this didn’t resonate well with me, the talent who was contacted because they had been identified as a good fit, particularly as the caller didn’t get my name right, and hadn’t read the ‘souring report’ they’d been supplied.
Whether systems of thought or technology, most recruitment systems encourage adherence to process. They encourage control – of the candidate, of the data, of the experience. Systems are all about universal experience, and a functional return on time spent. However, that control can come at a cost – the sense of automation rather than process. For the recruiter, ‘adhering to the process’ can be a synonym for ‘doing a good job’, particularly if the metrics which measure performance are built around the system itself. For the talent, it’s a massive turn off to feel like you’re talking to a machine, not a person.
This is an experience that can be designed for user delight, just like any other. A great phone interview should make the interviewee feel valuable, engaged and connected to the interviewer. If your brand is designed to communicate easy interaction and conversation, your processes need to be built with this in mind. Application, interview, onboarding – all these parts of the new employee experience should reflect the attributes of your employment experience. They should be reflective of your values and principles, and, ideally, your strategy regarding people.
Recruiters shouldn’t just be filling in forms and word-matching CVs to job specs. They are the ambassadors for the experience of being employed by your company. They’re the salespeople trying to make someone change their life, their routine and their job. Their role isn’t to adhere to process, but to satisfy process. And they can do it in such a way that they encourage emotional connection, a pleasant experience and begin to create the sense of mutual respect that forms the backbone of a good employment relationship.
The process shouldn’t get in the way of the people. The system shouldn’t overtake the core role of a recruiter/sourcer – which is to find and engage talent that’s ready to join the tribe, willing to endure the change required to change roles, and able to satisfy the duties of the role. Your talent are more than walking skill-sets, they’re people whose emotions are a strong part of the decision making process. And the process should never overtake the purpose.
// July 19th, 2010 // No Comments » // Recruitment Marketing
Applications (or apps, as we now call them) for mobile devices are the new black. With smartphone technology advancing, new devices and a flood of marketing and journalism around the app market, there’s plenty of noise. Apps are the new silver bullet, the must-have part of any process. At least, according to some. Not me.
The point of mobile apps is repetition. They’re designed to be used multiple times. If you’re downloading a program to your mobile device, you’d want it to be something you use time and again. Like ordering a pizza, or logging into Twitter, or taking photos. They’re designed to perform a specific repetitive function for the user.
Which is why they’re not suited for corporate recruitment.
Applying for a job is a process which requires a one-off, content-rich transmission of information from candidate to employer. It’s not like ordering a pizza or checking Facebook. It’s often a multi-stage process that requires consideration and a lot of detailed information. It’s a sales process, in which the candidate creates (essentially) a marketing impression upon a company.
Designing an app which includes the process of applying for a job with a company would require a huge amount of information transfer. Also, as most smart devices don’t allow a user to store a resume on file for upload, the app would have to mimic the entire resume-building process. Realistically, we’re talking about an app which requires the user to input four A4 pages of information to complete the process. And assuming the app works seamlessly with multiple candidate management systems (which is a big call, as many of these systems have very specific information requirements) you’ve just entered the database.
So why keep the app? You’re in the talent pool for that company now. You aren’t going to reapply to that company again, are you? If the company is sophisticated enough to be looking at recruitment apps, it’s a fair bet that it’s using a sophisticated automated candidate management system, and any repeated candidate applications will be discarded anyway. The supporters of this idea say the app could be updated with information about the brand and the company. And they’re right – although given the company already has this information on their website, why duplicate it? It’s additional content creation for another channel which doesn’t add any tangible value.
And what’s the value of it being an app at all? The preachers of this idea say it becomes more mobile. More accessible. Both of these are true, and yet both could be addressed by making the core recruitment portal online more mobile friendly. It wouldn’t make it any less time-consuming regarding the process, but it would mean that content only has to be updated once, not across multiple languages and platforms.
In addition, applying for a job is something which should require concentration. It’s a process of creating a great first impression. It isn’t something you should be doing on the bus, or while waiting for a movie to start. I know people use mobile devices in the home more and more (I know I do!) but that doesn’t change the fact that applying for a role requires a bit of gravity and dedication. It’s a sit-down task, and I honestly believe that giving the application process an app makes it seem flippant. It also isolates information – a recruitment-specific app doesn’t let candidates tour around and see what else you’re doing as a business. And if you include more information for a brand-rich environment, it’s like having two corporate websites that need updating. Why not just have one that you manage really well, that’s mobile-friendly?
Apps are about providing information to make it easier to do something again and again. Applying to work for a company is something candidates should be doing once, and doing with the maximum effort to increase their chances. Making it an app-driven process will make it more time consuming, less content-rich and (I believe) ultimately less enjoyable for a candidate. Personally, I’d rather my candidates found it easy and enjoyable to apply to my company. It’s part of designing the employment experience to make them more likely to connect, and stay, with the company long term.
// June 23rd, 2010 // 1 Comment » // Employment Branding
Three years ago, I had a conversation with one of our internal recruiters around the TVP (talent value proposition – like an EVP for a particular talent segment) for his area. He was recruiting IT people for an engineering firm, and attrition was high in that team. People weren’t staying for more than 6 months, and we were looking for a solution.
We sat down and read the ads that had been used in the past, looking for clues. They were pretty standard ads – list of skills, what you’ll be doing here, the usual jazz. There wasn’t much to inspire there, not a lot of cultural discussion. So we started writing new copy for all the ads to talk about the team from a human perspective.
And we hit a snag.
We were looking at recruiting into a team with an obvious problem around staff performance and culture. We were looking at recruiting into a team that suffered such quick turnover that only the staff who didn’t leave became the culture. We were recruiting fast moving fish into a stagnant pond, and watching them jump out straight away.
We had to choose how to tell this truth to the market. We had to find a way to still hit the targets and attract people, even though we were selling them a culture that would require a massive shift. The old ads had used the company EVP – be inspired, become part of a fast moving team, we’re doing great things, etc. However, the greater business EVP didn’t apply to a functional support area like IT. The first draft, which I call the dead draft (a cacophemism, the absolute hard truth version) read something like this:
“Join a team where your ideas will be crushed by the indifference of colleagues. You’ll work as part of an undervalued function, delivering services that the larger business will take for granted and making adjustments that no one will probably notice. You’ll sit beside some of the most boring and difficult to work with people we can find, who’ll inspire you to either abandon hope, or quit your job and work somewhere else. Apply now!”
We took this to the manager. We explained that we weren’t going to solve this by recruiting more people who either hated the culture and left, or hated the culture and stayed. We needed to fix this by being honest, and by fixing the team culture while we recruited people who could act as change agents.
By doing this, we replaced a lot of people in that group. We did it using our own brand, which cut down on recruitment fees. We did it using an honest TVP that explained that the function was changing, and we needed people to a part of the new evolution. We made this new direction obvious to staff and gave them the chance to opt out. We dropped attrition 20% in a year once the new culture was in place. And we influenced change to the point where that group started wanting to tell people outside the business how things were now, and how being an employee was making their lives better.
Building a brand (in employment or otherwise) involves three things – a good story, the right channel and quality execution. Are you spending as much time on creating a good story as you are on telling it?
// June 18th, 2010 // No Comments » // Career Development
Most companies ask this because it’s a way of finding out more about what drives a candidate, so they can be more expertly profiled for a manager or role. The closer the alignment between where we want them to be, and where they want to be, the higher they rate on the scale. It’s part of that old chestnut, ‘culture fit’. It’s company-serving information – it benefits the organisation.
I think there’s a better way. A way that includes changing the defaults.
If every employee feels like the business cares about their dreams, and is actively monitoring their progress, then there’s something to come to work for besides a paycheck. There’s a future they have a say in.
// June 17th, 2010 // No Comments » // Employment Branding
Our level of social interaction almost always plays a part in our self-image. The communities in which we operate, where we find prestige, acceptance and camaraderie, become part of our internal value system. From a retail perspective, advertisers have known this for years. It’s the reason why Coke is always being drunk by thin, attractive, socially conversant people on TV, even though many awkward, overweight and homely people probably also enjoy it in real life. We associate products with an image, which we use to rationalise our choices, and to make brands part of our social atmosphere. I wear Prada, therefore I am like the celebrities I admire who also wear Prada.
Online social technologies have made it easier to create our own tribes, and to interact with a wider array of people. As the limits of geography and chronogeography fall away, our social interactions are becoming faster and more diverse. Want to talk about cross-stitch? There are Facebook groups and discussions forums and probably a Twitter community who will share links on even the narrowest channels of embroidery and haberdashery. Love web design? Hundreds of blogs, communities and places to find inspiration, advice and people who share your passion. The PLUs – the People Like Us.
With this ability comes the opportunity for talent sourcing functions to step away from traditional recruitment and talent identification models towards something more immersive. For the first time, companies have access to the conversations that are taking place around their brands, their employment experience and their fields of expertise. These conversations are taking place on social networks and are searchable, trackable and joinable. They’re happening all the time. And with the right know-how, they’re a devastating weapon in creating expectation and aspiration among talent you’d like to attract.
Seduction is about conversation. It’s about finding common ground for a beneficial relationship, whether it’s a short-term relationship that’s mutually beneficial, or something longer. It’s about presenting an image that’s aligned to shared perception – an honest portrayal of values and benefits, delivered in a mutually-spoken language. Talent seduction is no different – it’s a process of creating connection, establishing a shared platform of interests and mutual benefit, and building trust and respect until the connection is solidified into a transaction or exchange of benefit.
So there are two parts to using social technology platforms to seduce talent. The first part is about content creation and dispersal. You’re going to attract people who share your values, and that includes the value you put on this content. A 3-minute video shot on a handycam might appeal to a certain market, but if you’re going to do a video and you want it to resonate, why not invest more time and resources to make it look better? The same is true of blogs, photo shoots, brochures – any created content transmits both the content and production value to an audience. It’s like a suit – anyone who tells you there’s no difference between off the rack and a bespoke suit has only ever worn off the rack. Putting the effort into your content is investing in your image and brand, and that can only help you appear considered, well-presented and attractive to the right people.
The second part is the conversation. It’s interaction. Being well-dressed is fine for a first impression, but if you sound off like a ladette the second someone speaks to you, it’s going to undo the work you put in to good content. The art of conversation is about listening more than you speak, about thinking before you sound off, and about an evolution of comfort. It’s a balance between sharing stories and responding to other people’s remarks. It’s an opportunity to influence the conversation, which shouldn’t be mistaken for dominating it. It’s creating expectation through shaped communication, not by standing up and screaming about how wonderful you are. And most of all, it’s about personal connection between a brand and an individual’s wants, needs, fears and expectations.
Imagine you go into a bar, and someone comes up to speak to you. They look like your sort of person, you’ve seen them around at other places you go, they’re outfitted in a style that speaks to you. They say hi. You say something back. They say, in a monotone “Thank you for speaking to me. I look forward to speaking to you! Hooray!” Offputting?
This is an automated response in real life. Whether it’s Twitter, email or anything else. It’s anti-human and anti-connection.
And here’s the kicker – if you know who you are (which in this case means you know your EVP and have an established brand) your targets will also know who you are. It means you can be more conversational and approachable – you don’t have to establish your identity or appear flashy. Your reputation will precede you, because you’ve spent time building it through interaction, and through being consistent. You can establish your value proposition in a social community by demonstrating those values and by being open to discussion with people who want to become part of what you offer.
We identify with those who share our take on things. We are more likely to work for companies who share our views on things that matter to us. Some companies might publish a list of those things on a website, and that’s a start. However, if a company can get into conversations about those values, and use those conversations to create a rapport, they can generate an emotional connection. And those are much harder to sever, and much more likely to make us invest in any relationship
// May 26th, 2010 // No Comments » // Recruitment Marketing
Recruiting is about people. It’s about human interaction – people identifying with a story, with an idea, with a culture. It’s about creating a common perception that’s driven by people, and related to their social habits. Technology facilitates that, but it certainly doesn’t replace it.
So while we talk about Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and their web-based friends, we’re failing to discuss a fundamental part of the concept – those channels are only as good as the people using them. Not from a skill perspective, but from a content perspective. Who is managing your interaction? What is the purpose of it – to land a candidate or to build the brand?
When we talk about candidate management systems and CRM systems for talent acquisition, we’re replacing human interaction with technology. We’re substituting human connection for reliability, for a consistent experience. Yes, every candidate gets a response when they apply, but it’s not from a person – it’s from a program. When we adopt systems that search online for social media profile information, are we using technology to spy on people, or to replace our ability to evaluate humans without going through their online personas? Is every communication in line with the employment brand?
As a community of people whose profession is talent, finding and engaging people is what we do. More than ever, technology delivers us opportunity and risk. Ensuring that our communications, regardless of the media, are clear, are going to be interpreted the way we expect them to be, and are in line with the brand and our values as a business, is going to have a more positive impact than being on fifty new social media platforms and using them all randomly.
Get the voice of the brand right. Make it something people want to listen to and engage with first, and then adopting new channels, new strategies and new media becomes easier to manage, and more lucrative.
// March 19th, 2010 // 3 Comments » // Employment Branding
I’ve already been involved in some online debates about whether the practice of gathering data from personal social network profiles to research candidates is ethical. And rather than repeat my position, I’ve got some case studies for those who have been commenting, because I think this deserves exploring.
// 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.
Copyright © 2010 Workplace Romances – Jared Woods. All rights reserved.
