I disagree.

I disagree because the argument about content craftsmanship is not a binary equation. We have a spectrum of options between ‘cheap and cheerful’ and ‘Directed by Ridley Scott’ blockbuster. Sure, there’s the occasion when being able to capture content relies on being in the moment, but this shouldn’t dictate your strategy. There’s certainly a difference between shooting like this, or producing something like this.

Life is not a choice between ‘shorts and sneakers’ and ‘tuxedo’. We have different outfits for different purposes, and it’s generally the case that as our intimacy with a group of people increases, our standard of dress relaxes. We cultivate a casual standard through continual exposure to our personality. We don’t begin this way for a reason. Many people still wear suits to job interviews because they acknowledge the statement that wearing a suit makes – we are here for work purposes, I am dressed accordingly. It is a professional standard, one that shows you’ve made an effort. It doesn’t make you any less ‘authentically’ you, it just means you’ve made a conscious choice to present yourself in a way that shows you care about how you’re seen.

The same argument goes for the basics of communication. If you’re not a great speller or a master of the apostrophe, you aren’t suddenly more authentic if you continue to spell things wrong or choose NOT to learn how punctuation works. It doesn’t make you seem more legitimate, or more believable. In fact, it does the opposite. It makes it look like you don’t care enough to proofread. Not edgy, not more real – just lazy.

Creating content should be about combining authenticity with craftsmanship. It should be about finding your narrative and expressing it to the best of your ability. It’s about being prepared to set a standard for your voice, a professional standard that you won’t compromise. If you have a story that’s worth telling, it’s worth telling well. And it’s worth taking the time to make sure it looks official, legitimate and is the best product you can produce in a reasonable time.

Overcooked is a comparative term. Content becomes, in my understanding, overcooked when the message is lost in the polishing. When you create content that’s not compelling or original, but stays firmly on the safe side of the corporate line. But that’s not about the time it takes to create – it’s about making something technically brilliant with no heart and soul. Good content needs emotion, whether it’s a sneezing panda or an Apple keynote or a cat with bacon taped to it. You don’t need to sacrifice quality to create emotion or authenticity, and you certainly don’t deliberately create content whose only merit is that it was ‘quick and dirty’.

It’s one thing to make ‘raw’ content because that’s your only option. However, when it isn’t, why do anything less than your best work?

To watch this as a video, click here.

These days, most of our technology comes in two formats. It is either devices, such as tablets and smartphones, or it is software. While the two often go hand in hand, it is software, and specifically the operating platforms we use therein, that make the most impact to our administrative lives. It’s a growing field in which we can see huge gains made in our processes by adopting newer platforms and versions of existing software, and taking advantage of the automation of some of those tasks.

But there’s a problem. The leap towards software as a saviour has had an unexpected side effect. We seem to have forgotten what it’s for. We’ve made the ability to save time and effort a benefit, instead of looking at what we can turn those savings into.

There’s a saying among the more sartorial; they should never see the outfit, they should just see you. The outfit should be so natural, so tailored and so obviously aligned with what you’re offering that it should become invisible. This is how I feel about the two things that software gives us in the people community; user experience for our passive and active talent, and our internal processes for evaluating, hiring and on-boarding our candidates.

There’s a hierarchy of creating pleasurable interfaces (taken from Stephen P Anderson’s excellent presentation on the same topic) that shows the growth in engagement and emotional payoff for users as we move from ‘functional’ experiences to ‘pleasurable’ ones. As we use our resources to make the experience richer and more natural, we generate confidence and enjoyment among our users, which benefits both their attachment to the brand and their sense of comfort. We build trust by making things fun, simple and streamlined, preferably by attaching the brand values we recognise as our own into the mix.

It’s a big jump. Almost all the software we use to do the function-specific elements of our job was designed to make our lives easier as recruiters. The majority of careers pages are designed as add-ons to existing corporate websites, and are built in rigid structures that have been inherited from a company’s original website. Our media channels (with the exemption of social media) are just as rigid, even down to the way we phrase our job descriptions and role advertising. We are driven to a standard template through a mix of anecdotal experience and system limitations, and even those are linked. When the first pieces of recruitment software were built, we asked that they be able to do what we thought we needed, and so that’s what they do, and nothing more.

There are some pretty easy runs to be put on the board by stepping beyond the line in the sand that we drew ourselves. Some companies are already doing it, and I expect we’ll see more. Building gaming and rewards-based interaction into recruitment processes, using rich media content to demonstrate the corporate culture (and not just the video that was made for the shareholders, either) and creating opportunities for interaction over and above what’s required or generated by the system are all good places to start. The technology is good, but it should be used as a tool to connect people with things that are interesting: other people, good stories, immersive brand experiences, even the odd moment of inspiration. We sell the belief in a better tomorrow, but many of the interactions we subject candidates to set a tone of satisfying process, rather than escorting candidates through a learning experience that familiarises them with the brand even as we tick our checklist in the background.

The other benefit of this is that people relax. No one is comfortable using an interface that makes them feel stupid or overly taxed. Giving them a means of communicating and interacting that feels natural and enjoyable creates an atmosphere of comfort, and leads users to be more open, more likely to offer feedback, and more likely to raise issues with the company, not in a social media back channel somewhere. Your point of difference goes from being robust on the process side, to being accessible on the human side. And that’s where all the wins are.

If your point of difference is software, then your point of difference is that you have something that anyone else can have for a price. If your automated process is the crown jewel of your efforts, then you’re replaceable. It isn’t the software that makes you different, or remarkable, or enjoyable to deal with. It’s what you do with the extra time that software gives you, particularly if you invest it in being more creative, more communicative and more approachable.

1. How would  we change our model if we worked on a donation system where our clients paid what they thought was fair?
2. How could we do this faster than our average turnaround time?
3. How many of our problems are because of our systems?
4. How many of our problems are because of our process?
5. How could we deliver the same results, for the same cost, without using any of our current channels?
6. If we couldn’t compete on price, how else would you add value to our customer offering?
7. Who is our customer?
8. If our organisation was a volunteer/not for profit instead of a company, how would our operational strategy change?
9. What would change if we could never meet candidates, managers or stakeholders  face to face?
10. How would your strategy change if you were never allowed to identify who we are to customers?

HR In Black And White – Riges Younan from Jared Woods on Vimeo.

What would the world be missing out on?

What would you, as an employee, miss out on?

The answer to the first question is the reason your company exists.

The answer to the second is your employer brand.

The reason any employee works at a company can be seen as an overlap between the company’s ‘generic’ employer brand (ie, the value proposition constructed from the points which the majority of employees agree are part of the employment experience) and the employee’s personal brand affiliation. Let’s call this an overlapping synergy. The larger the synergy, the more likely you’ll be a culture fit, and the more likely you’ll enjoy the role.

Mapped in two dimensions, this is a simple Venn diagram. Larger overlap, more points of common perceived benefit (between you and the ‘brand’ average) means a picture of more engagement. (and as a side note, look at those values and try and construct a person out of them. Even a fictional person makes it very easy to start drawing comparisons. This is what I call a ‘brand mannequin’ – looks like a person but isn’t, but good for measuring people against)

However, the two-dimensional synergy (and indeed the brand mannequin) doesn’t take into account the power of beliefs. Sharp spikes in the strength of those values can create different synergies. That extra dimension makes a substantial shift in the nature of engagement.

For example – Carl works for a company which has ten core values at the heart of the EVP. He doesn’t care about six of them, and two of the remaining four are things he agrees with at a reasonable level. The remaining two are Carl’s defining passions – they drive his career goals and his desires. In a two dimensional argument (yes/no) along the brand agreement, Carl scores 4/10. Not a high score on the employee engagement scale.

However, ask Carl what he’ll miss if he can no longer work for the company, and his answer will probably, amidst the social data, suggest that the company was aligned to his values. Maybe not all of them, but certainly the ones that mattered.

Overlapping synergy between the brand values is the first goal of an EVP – find out what we stand for and why people work here, and align the workforce, through education or ongoing recruitment, to build an overlapping synergy between the company and the individual value positions. Understanding the passions, and how huge a difference they can make to brand loyalty, to engagement and to a personal investment in your own professional development, comes once an organisation’s value proposition becomes part of the performance and career dialogue.

If you had to leave tomorrow, what would you miss? And is that really the reason you go to work every day? And if it is, what are you doing to get more of that, or keep it more secure?

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.

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.

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?

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

(I’ll preface this by pointing out that I am a gamer, albeit casually. So my insights into gaming as a subculture are driven largely by my own participation in gaming. )

Where gaming becomes essentially a tribe (by which I mean a subculture with a communal interest, language and standard of value) is when shared exposure to a particular experience becomes a unifying factor. Gamers become members of factions within their tribe that revolve around genres, platforms, styles, social connections and more. There’s occasionally some tribal warfare among these smaller groups (PC vs console, X360 vs PS3, etc) but they are still all gamers. Their membership to a self-selected class of people becomes part of their identity. They actively seek out discussion on their areas of interest. They recognise each other through a shared cultural language and, occasionally, uniform.

How do gamers get wins? Achievement. Achievement over universal expectation, set by the industry. Beating a game universally acknowledged as difficult creates prestige and personal value. Winning a gaming competition against skilled players builds reputation. The community defines its own champions against the standard set by programmers and the average experience curve. In short, the continued standard of value grows organically, as more games, more gamers and a constantly shifting standard of ‘average’ skill contribute to an overall perception.

Tribal values are community driven. They are set by adherence to a shared evaluation of what constitutes average. So creating wins is about having a communal set expectation of ‘ordinary’ so that ‘extraordinary’ is easily recognisable. You can’t overstep the mark without knowing where the mark is, and you can’t add value without knowing the difference between what is extra and what’s just service. So setting the average expectation is key.

Encouraging wins from a community perspective is the other side of the coin. Enhancing a culture which celebrates individual achievement against an accepted norm creates competition, not against each other, but against the standard. In golf, this is referred to as ‘playing against the course’. Set a ‘par’ performance on a particular task (which is essentially average expectation) and people will try to beat it for a self-perceived pay-off. If you have a culture which celebrates wins, and confers an objective, external benefit which supplements the individual’s sense of achievement, you create two connections. You connect achievement with external recognition, and you connect individual standard of value with recognised norms.

Stimulating tribal values allows us to create a framework to evaluate success. Connecting individual perception of above-average performance with recognisable reward builds community. The epic win pays off; in higher engagement with the community, in improved performance against the average, and in emotional reinvestment from the employee.

How can you change your culture to encourage epic wins?