People are strange and awesome (or: Ten things I learned at the AAGE)

// November 17th, 2010 // No Comments » // Behaviour, Branding

Last week I went to the Australian Association of Graduate Employers’ Conference in Melbourne. It’s a hearty affair, with more than 350 industry types attending, across the range of employers, academia representatives, suppliers and industry associations. It was a good week, but rather than write lengthy sections on every session, here’s a quick ten things list. And very little of it has to do with grad recruitment.

Everyone loves a showman. The two presentations which really stood out for me both came from charismatic, well-spoken presenters who combined data-heavy content with personal anecdotes and humour. In a room of more than 350, being able to make your audience members feel special and engaged remains a rare skill, and a valuable one.

Context is contrast. My favourite old issue. A lot of the information was shared like a chapter from a book – there was no prologue or epilogue, no sense of how this fits into other initiatives or histories. The focus was very operational, on small improvements people have made, without understanding what frameworks make these improvements possible. Case studies are great, but understanding what led to the case being so successful outside of just the data would have been more helpful in stimulating like-for-like comparisons.

Your mistakes can hang around. There were a few examples of people’s bad behaviour from previous conferences tarring them in the crowd. Every event has a back channel of rumour, and this one is no exception. In an industry with 50% annual turnover, I was amazed how many people had heard the same stories about some of the more flamboyant characters.

Alcohol and your personal brand don’t mix well. I’ve heard that alcohol amplifies your natural character, and I agree to an extent. And while I’m as guilty as any of having a few too many, it’s interesting to have seen the next-day repercussions in a room of industry types. Particularly for those who had indulged so heavily that they missed sessions their employers had paid for them to attend.

Negativity is anathema. Predominately, the discussions and questions around speaker topics (social media, testing, positive psychology and more) were positive and progressive. It was interesting to observe that, in a room full of people who were there to learn, just how often attendees would physically shy away from nearby attendees who were asking negative questions.

Social media is still eluding many. The informal discussions around social media continue to suggest that simply being on social media as an earnest participant are enough to guarantee at least a modest success. Which is the equivalent of saying if you turn up to the right clubs and dress nice, you’re bound to have fun. There wasn’t a lot of discussion about how to determine which channels suit your brand’s personality, or how to drive strategic use of these tools and options.

Tarred with the brand brush. In a room full of people who are good at their job, it’s interesting how much weight is lent to speaking for a brand. I found myself listening more intently to speakers once I knew what company they represented – the brand lent gravitas to their arguments. And I wondered how people drew the line between their personal opinions and their professional positions – I know I had trouble!

People make odd decisions. During the conference, someone tweeted that they had gatecrashed the event, and proceeded to dissect a presentation given by a reputable corporate brand in fairly harsh terms on Twitter. From this, I’ve learned three things. Firstly, don’t tweet that you’ve snuck into somewhere without paying (particularly don’t use the event hashtag!). Secondly, bagging out a presentation you haven’t paid to see, in a public forum, visible to your whole industry, isn’t likely to make you a welcome guest. Thirdly, don’t bag out a presenter if you’re already on a schedule to present alongside them at a conference in six months. Because they’ll probably know you did it, and you’re not likely to get the respect you’re looking for.

The industry doesn’t want high performers. Largely, because it makes everyone else’s job hard. No one wants to compete for talent with an organisation that’s doing it better than you – it’s like playing video games with a teenager. While there was a lot of sharing of technical information, there wasn’t a focus on creating game-changing programs or really kicking ass. My personal view is that this is because everyone in the industry knows that their organisation isn’t going to stump up the cash for something incredible when we can all get by doing roughly the same thing. More on this point later, but I felt very keenly that only one presentation was focused on innovation ‘because we can’.

People can be surprisingly awesome in the right setting. I met more than 100 new people in three days. I danced with strangers, drank with suppliers, traded cards and stories and tips with a host of rookies and veterans. I connected IRL with some people I knew online, put faces to usernames and build my network just a little more. I was impressed by the attitude of attendees – that we were united in a journey to make it easier for graduates to find the right job, and to make good choices for their futures. Like the other conferences I’ve been to this year, it was a great way to spend time and see the world from lots of different angles and through a myriad of different lenses. Bring on 2011.

Emotional Talent Acquisition – Process Or Purpose?

// 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.

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.