Jared's Blog

A Simple Note Of Thanks

2009-02-09T03:15:00.000-08:00

Thank you, Australians.

In the past seventy two hours we've seen horrific scenes of destruction and death from the Victorian bushfires. With more than 130 confirmed dead and hundreds of thousands of hectares destroyed, it's been a challenging and emotional day.

And you've risen to it.

Around Australia, via Facebook, Twitter and millions of other social interactions, we've raised millions of dollars to help real Australians who have lost everything. I'm proud to call myself an Aussie today - I'm proud to have donated my money and my time, proud of having supported our brave firefighters, police and emergency services workers and proud that so many of my friends have helped out.

So rather than getting on my regular soapbox, I'm making this simple. There is a spirit which unites Australians that I am proud to share. For every idiot who chose this as an occasion to bad mouth the government, or arsonists (and rightly so) or anyone else, there are fifty Aussies supporting each other.

Thank you for being there when the chips were down, when people like you needed help. I love this country.

10 Ways To Make The Most Of Careers Fairs

2009-02-07T22:22:00.001-08:00

A Career Fair is like going to a craft market, but for a job. There’s lots to look at, lots of people crowding every stand, everything’s different, and everyone’s trying to make a sale. They’re noisy, take lots of time and, unless you are prepared, they could leave you with very little of value.

Here are ten steps to making the most out of a graduate careers fair

Do your homework
The average university careers fair has more than 140 exhibitors in attendance. If you had a five minute conversation with the top 1/4 of companies, you’d spend more than 3 hours talking! Make a list of who you want to talk to about a career, and research the company. Recruiters will take this a sign that you’re serious about working with their company, and it means that, in a few minutes, you can have a vastly more meaningful discussion.

Plan your attack
Careers fairs aren’t organised with easy navigation in mind. Use the map to identify the companies you want to talk to, and use your time more effectively by moving directly between their booths. This isn’t window-shopping – talk to your first priorities, then take your rime if you want to. The more time you spend with the companies you’re interested in, the more productive you’ll be.

Prepare questions
At a careers event, there’s no shortage of people who haven’t studied up on a particular company, and are standing at a booth asking the basic questions a little research could have answered. Go into a dialogue knowing that you want specific answers to questions, as well as some general information. It will make it easier to compare employers if you’ve got the same information from all of them, and make for a far better dialogue with the people manning the booth. Also, it makes you look prepared, and no company in the world would look unfavourably on that.

Take notes
If you want to remember a particular piece of information, take a notepad and pen. No one will mind, and often you’ll find out information that isn’t in the brochure. NOTE: take a pen with you. While you can usually find one at a careers fair, it’s best to be prepared and take your own.

Allow plenty of time
You would think that a careers fair that goes for more than two hours would give you plenty of time to talk to the people you want to see. So many students attend that you may not get a chance to talk to recruiters on your first tour around your preferred employers. Allow yourself enough time to talk with more of the companies you want to, and plan for it to take twice as long as you think it will.

Talk, don’t read
Lots of companies will have brochures, along with the inevitable web page, drink bottle/pen/keychain/bottle opener, etc. Some will even have plasma TVs and videos to watch. This is all great stuff for getting the company log out there, but odds are, it won’t answer the specific questions. Talk to the company representatives there, and dig deep into their personal experiences and goals. Lots of companies have a marketing department that puts the message together. Only by talking to the people on the stand will you find out if it’s true or not.

Go with friends
Odds are, your friends will have thought about some different questions than you that you want to ask. If you go with two or three people, you can trade ideas, and have a good group chat about what you think of potential employers. You’ll also hear and pick up on different things when talking to companies, so it’s a great idea to catch up afterwards and swap stories.

Make personal connections
Most companies will have a recruiter or HR professional on the stand, to talk about the process of applying and interviewing. It’s worth making the point of talking to the recruiter, and having a serious discussion with them about the company and what they’re looking for. If you make a strong impression on a recruiter right from the outset, chances are they’ll pay more attention when your application comes through.

Follow up
If you really want to make an impression, get a business card from someone on the stand, and email them promptly to thank them for their time. Email any follow-up questions you have (some companies have a Facebook presence specifically to ask questions too) and let them know once you’ve applied. Not only will you draw their attention to your application, you’ll show yourself as dedicated to establishing a good reputation. And that can only pay off!

Don’t obsess
Finally, remember that careers fairs are the tip of the iceberg. You can always ring companies to talk to a recruiter, visit their website, Facebook page or other online resource to find out more information and apply. If you miss the careers fair, just send an email to the companies you want to work for, and start a one on one discussion with them.

The Biggest Test For Your Employer Brand

2009-02-05T19:29:00.000-08:00

I've never seen a truly accurate brand equity model for an employer brand. I've seen a few that required external factors, such as recruiter agency cost savings, cost per hire and so forth. While I don't know if there's a great working equation for how much your employer brand is worth in dollar value, I do know there's a great test.

It's your rejection letter.

How does it make your unsuccessful people feel when they read it? Does it feel like a form letter than had no thought put into it? Is it full of corporate speak about values alignment and 'a number of highly qualified candidates' who had also applied? Is it like chewing tinfoil to read when your future's on the line? I hope not, but I suspect it's part way there.

If you can tell someone they don't have the skills to get the job they applied for with your company, and do it in such a way that they still want to work for you, then you've got it made.

Insult Your Future Employees. I Dare You.

2009-02-04T23:37:00.000-08:00

In fact, I probably don't have to. You're probably doing it, right now.

You're probably doing it in small ways, like using language which is condescending. You're probably talking to them either like they're children, or like you're a machine. You're probably shouting at them about how wonderful you are, how great the work you do is and how you're so different and unique. You're probably not listening to them much either, because they're talking about you, not to you. Because they think you won't listen.

You're probably doing it in one really big way too. You're doing it by calling them candidates.

Candidate originally referred to those seeking office, and largely, it still does. That may be how you see potential hires - as someone who aspires to obtain an office or position. However, the big trap comes when you start imposing your view of them onto the relationship you have with them. Just because you see them as candidates doesn't mean they do. In fact they see themselves as something else.

A person.

Every time I read an ad which asks for 'the successful candidate', I have a sudden overwhelming urge to smack someone. Guess what? The person reading that ad doesn't think you're talking to them. Sure, they might be successful and they are a potential candidate, but that's not how they see themselves. And in the context of a one-to-one communication, which essentially all recruitment positional ads are, they don't want you talking about them in the third person.

So what's the answer? You is the answer. I know it's bad grammar - I'm making a point.

Talk to your audience as people, not as cattle begging for the slaughter. Talk to them as humans who share most of your frame of reference. They know what victory feels like. They know fear. They know jubilation and camaraderie and the shambling despair of fatigue. They want to be excited, scared, amazed. They want to know that you're looking for someone like them, or, if you're not, that you're invested enough in finding someone that you're prepared to step away from the corporate thesaurus and talk like a human being.

You might not read your adverts and think there's anything wrong with them. But would you apply? With all your heart? Do you want - really, totally, first-crush-holding-hands kind of want - that job?

The Religion Of "Good"

2009-02-04T21:43:00.000-08:00

The most frightening thing I can hear when I'm walking around the halls of this business and talking to people is that this is a good place to work. It's a good opportunity. It's good creative.

I'm not the first to say this, but I feel I have to. Run screaming from anything people want to label as 'good' (or 'nice' - that's the other one)

Good is safety. Good is a capitulation. Good is a compromise to be just on the plus side of average. Good is the "Let's just be friends" of standards. Good, and all the non-descript, subjective flotsam words that surround it in the pantheon of beige, is what's killing both HR and employment marketing.

"We're a good employer." Who cares?
"We're a great place to work." Says who?
"Our people are skilled." Frankly, if they weren't they wouldn't have jobs. Everyone's skilled at something.

The language of passivity has already made a comfortable home in our business communications, and is starting to buy new furniture. We've become, by dint of the 'broad appeal' approach, afraid of polarising opinions. We were never edgy to begin with, but now we're vacillating, vanilla victims of political correctness.

When did we stop wanting to shout our glory from the rooftops?

I want engineers to want to work here. I want them to see this like an exclusive club. Like Willy Wonka and his golden tickets. I want them to feel they deserve to work here because they're skilled, dedicated and passionate enough. I want to be able to say to the market "If you're not the best in the world, then don't bother." Only the best deserve to wear the purple of our livery, to say, as a badge of pride, that they were good enough to work for this business.

Instead, we're a talented group of project design and delivery people working together to achieve success for our clients. It's... difficult... to get excited by that. Sounds good, n'est pas?

Your employees, my employees, anyone's employees. The people who work for any business are united by common threads, common challenges, and (initially) a pride in their workplace. Foster the pride. Unite the tribe. And not only will you find them easier to lead, but you'll probably start to see them arriving where you want them to go before you tell them to go there.

Videogames And Leadership

2009-02-03T23:53:00.000-08:00

When computer games first began giving you control of more than one player, it was as an overseer. Think back to the Age Of Empires/Warcraft/Command& Conquer games, and it was easy. You were above the action, furiously directing troops, with a helicopter view of the action. You could see forces moving against you, and it was up to you to marshal, train and pay for your troops to win the battle.

This, at least to latent Gen X ers and GenYs, was management. This is how it works. See problem, have total awareness of your resources, set skills and people, and defeat your foes.

Recently, video games have undergone an evolution. With the creation of live online gaming, we started to need to choose leaders for ourselves. We picked the best, the most able, the strongest fighters or drivers or warriors. We created, by dint of ranking systems and a Darwinian slaughter, a hierarchy of skill. We chose our leaders as the ones most able to perform.

What does this mean for our workplace perceptions these days?

Well for a start (and I'm not a Gen Y, I'm just a gamer) our managers don't perform the way we expect. They're flawed and often indecisive. We expect them to take action and, in the event that they don't, we expect them to ask for help. We're more focused (mostly) on using the individual strengths and weaknesses of a team to accomplish a task, and we're always better off when we know the strategy we're pursuing.

I've played a lot of videogames , and am a devotee of both the overhead management strategy game and the in-the-trenches kicking ass games. Whenever I'm playing a strategy game, I think to myself "If only managers could identify the strengths of a team as easily as I can tell archers from swordsmen."

And then I wonder why they can't.....

Brand Vs Reputation

2009-02-02T21:16:00.000-08:00

In a management meeting this week, I was asked about our employer brand. Having worked with other brands before in an agency setting, I was giving the breakdown between an employer brand (the essence of working for an organisation) and employer branding (the guidelines around cosmetic look and feel, language, etc) and how the use of the brand doesn't require the rigidity that the branding does.

One of our managers asked "What's the difference, then, between our employer brand and our employer reputation?" Good question.

From my perspective, the difference is subjectivity. Our reputations come from the discussions had around us from an individual perspective. Our current and former employees, our clients, pundits, experts - all these people contribute to varying reputations. And often they're extreme, and based around core issues. People don't express opinions that are mediocre or middle-of-the-road. If they're talking about you, it's because you're either remarkable, or infamous.

Our brand is an entity, the solidification of our values, the essence of an experience which needs to be communicated to be heard. Our brand is the voice of the people within our company. It's coming from a single direction and, from a managed comms perspective, is based on objective values. "We are an employer that cares about families." I can back up a statement like that with facts and qualifiers.

We influence our reputations through our brand, but not our brand through our reputations. Brand is the antithesis of reputation. Brand is the thing that creates expectation and assigns a series of values to an entity. It's the single message that either negates or reinforces a reputation. If we have a reputation for caring about the environment, and someone who is exposed to that reputation comes across a brand that reinforces it, how likely are they to believe someone who says we don't care about the environment? Not very likely, are they.

You don't control reputations - they exist without you. You can control the behaviour that leads to a particular reputation, and you can use that reputation to influence change. You can respond to the accusation within a negative reputation, but you're not going to do it by creating a false positive reputation. You're going to use your brand.

The simple answer; reputation is what people hear from other people about you. Brand is what they hear from you.

Wowing the Customer, Employment Style

2009-02-01T17:06:00.000-08:00

Here's a little story about how customer satisfaction can blindside you.

As partof my role, I help our internal recuriters put together attraction campaigns for staff. This is particularly true around graudate season, when the competition heats up, and we hit the streets with a national strategy. It's then up to the local recruiters to deliver on the quality and promise of this campaign, which is sometimes not too reliable.

Last year, our campaign won "Graduate Campaign Of The Year" which was awesome. Industry recognition is great, and it certainly helped us get funding to try new directions this year. We placed our target of graduates for the year (more than 150) but there was some lingering doubt about how well our coal-face recruiters represented the business. We'd heard... stories.

Then I found a blog with Google Alerts. Written by one of our graduate hires. About the whole 'getting a job' thing.

She'd written to her friends in her home country in South America, talking about how she'd gotten a job with us. She'd talked about how much she loved the materials, and that she did her research before talking to one of our people. She'd been continually impressed at the level of service, and had, in one instance, been blown away when the recruiter took the time to drop off an offer letter in person, so that this graduate would know she was still highly valuable to the firm.

She's blogged since about her first day with us last week, the people she's met, and the fact that her friends are at competitors and aren't having quite as much fun.

I've tried without success to get the business to understand how important customer perceptions are, and today, watching the management team read these posts, I think they finally understand.

Occasionally, the unsolicited honesty of a happy customer makes your day.

Ten Tips For Tiny Tots

2009-01-29T19:39:00.000-08:00

If you're a manager in a business that's not known for innovation (and I don't care what field you're in) the fight you have to impress graduates is already difficult. Grad recruitment is fraught with corporate promises made by recruiters, then suddenly passed on to managers as a "Oh yeah, you've got to do this too."

So if you're needing to impress graduates by demonstrating that you're accessible, interested in their development and in a position to help them, here's a list of ten things you should probably do.

1. Don't try and talk in text language, or grad speak. They can spot a phony a mile away, and they already know you're not one of them. Maybe talk to them like people, not a stereotype.

2. Don't expect them to behave like all the Gen-Y stereotypes you know. Watching the OC doesn't make you an expert on Generation Y anyway, and those kids are fictional.

3. Do think about what they're here for. They didn't come to hear about your glory days or be your best mate. Or make you feel younger. They came to learn, work and socialise, in equal measures.

4. Do ask them where they want to go with their lives. The thing that every new employee likes most is the feeling that you personally care about what they want. Show some interest in your people.

5. Don't become boring. You're already at a disadvantage because you're 'the boss man'. Do things differently to stand out, not just to your employees, but to the people above you as well. There's almost always a more fun way to do what you're doing.

6. Don't kill them with PowerPoint. Talk to them. Nothing's more boring than PowerPoint. Even good PowerPoint is disheartening.

7. Do get feedback about your performance, as often as I can. Graduates like to be told that they're doing a good job, and assuming they are, it's a good practice to follow. Ask them what they think of how things are going, and if there are things that they'd like to see. it's simple, free and freakishly effective.

8. Do help them find a mentor. Gutsy and brash they may be, but even the boldest grad isn't good at finding someone to help them learn.

9. Do let them make (some) mistakes. Holding hands is for girlfriends and boyfriends. You aren't their parents, and people remember the lessons that come from getting it wrong a lot more than the ones you warned them about first.

10. Do be human. You're not just a manager - you're a person too, and the more people connect with people, the easier the whole thing gets. Find your boundaries, stick to them when you need to, and give them the respect they deserve.

If all else fails, buy robots.

Talent Pipelines Or Recruiter Lifelines

2009-01-28T17:33:00.000-08:00

Talent pipe-lining has been on the agenda here for a long time. The 'long game' conversations with potential superstars who are risk-averse and comfortable, the personal touch and the slow conversion from the religion of 'there' to the religion of 'here'. We need it to attract really specialised, really happy people into our business. It's been on the agenda since my first day.

Today it was unveiled, and frankly, I was surprised.

In 18 months or so, we've identified that we need to talk differently to graduates than we do to senior level, highly experienced professionals. (Duh!) We've identified that specific people should manage the pipelines. In fact, we've identified that for our graduate pipeline, 1 person should manage 100 potential hires, while at senior level, 3 people should manage a total pool of 15 candidates. We've identified that there needs to be a communications plan for each sector - grad, mid level and senior. And that's about all.

What's missing? WIIFM, in a nutshell.

The long game of attracting a talented, cautious and currently well-looked-after hire into your organisation requires tact, tenacity and some good psychological understanding of what's behind the decision. It requires an understanding of the person's 'faith' (or underlying belief, desire or values) in order to show them, quietly and without too much fanfare, that switching from their current church (to continue the analogy) to your church, is going to not only benefit them, but put them amongst like-minded individuals. It rests on the tenets of personal communication and being 'on the same side', as it were. It is an individual process.

For the potential hire, it's a recognition that they are perceived as the superstar by a competitor. It's the slowly uncovered realisation that there might be greener pastures elsewhere. It's the gentle exposing of current dissatisfaction, of unrest with the current structure, and the marriage of goals and the means to achieve them. It's an experience of profound self-actualisation - the target has become a symbol of their field, the difficult to reach. It's ego-boosting and confidence building and, if done right and followed through, becomes a defining anchor in the retention of that person.

Where we find an issue is here - you need to have a role for them. Available whenever they decide to come to you.

Our system hasn't been built to create moments of profound connection between our employment brand and a potential superstar. it's been created as a way of building a talent pool that requires little maintenance below senior level, on the assumption that people who register their interest with us will remain interested. It requires the thinking that they will sit outside the figurative door, waiting to have us open it and offer them a cup of tea and a nice rewarding career. It requires the belief that they'll continue to do this long after reasonable expectation tells them we aren't opening the door anytime soon.

We are communicating with people. We are communicating with living, thinking, highly skilled human beings. We're getting them to fall in love with us, and then, once we've done that, telling them that we're not single right now, but if they hang around, don't get too involved with anyone else and we stay friends, maybe one day there's a chance. Who's going to fall for that? Certainly no one will fall for it twice.

This isn't a talent pipeline. This is a recruiter pool to try and have great, interested and pre-qualified candidates on hand when a vacancy shows up. It's a way of trying to interest people enough to become part of a database, and maintaining their interest in working for you enough that they'll still love you when you haven no role for them. It's a recruiter lifeline.

Needless to say, we're going to redesign in. The thing that stuck with me most about the whole thing was that I'm not a recruiter, and I saw this as a problem. None of the recruiters did.

A way of seeing is a way of not seeing. That just keeps becoming more true.

It's Not A War For Talent.

2009-01-27T18:16:00.000-08:00

If you've been anywhere near the experience of finding staff in the past twelve months, you would have heard the phrase 'war for talent' as a factor (not an excuse) for not being able to find perfect new hires with a snap of the fingers. You would have heard it mentioned on recruiting blogs as a fundamental crisis of the current climate (and the climate before this one) when looking for the right people.

Listen carefully. There is no war for talent. The inaccuracy of the term has confused us all.

A war is against someone, for ownership of something. A war requires a single goal, and a long-term strategy, and a multitude of resources working harmoniously to achieve that goal. Some of that sounds right. But who are you fighting?

That's right. No one. Not your competitors. Not your potential hires. Not the recruitment agencies. You're fighting customer expectation. You're fighting the intangible sum of perception around what your potential hire wants, believes and thinks they deserve.

Seth Godin says in The Big Moo that our expectations are unrealistic, and they're being met every day. Nowhere is this more true than in a world where you can access salary data and information about the best workplaces in the world with a couple of clicks. Our expectations about what we deserve from a career are astronomically high. We've been empowered to think that good ideas will net us millions, that we can switch jobs without repercussions, that somewhere there is an ideal job waiting for us, if we just look hard enough.

What we're fighting in our quest to obtain talent isn't other people who want this person. It's what this person thinks they shoudl get, or are worth. Not just in dollars, although that's a factor, but in their other Maslow type needs. Prestige, security, social interaction, hope for the future. These things aren't just nice to have any more. These are the issues we need to be addressing.

If you want to find the best people for a role, it's not enough to know what they might be doing now, or where they might be working. You need to know what they want, where they've come from, what they dream about, and what motivates them. You need to know about their team ethic, their values and responsibilities, their social interactivity and their goals for the future. You need to talk to them, not about how great the people working for you think that working for you is. You need to talk to them about whether working for you is the right thing for them, right now. If it is, hire them.

But don't expect to be able to put an advert in a newspaper one week out of 52, amongst at least two hundred other job adverts (plus retail ads, news, entertainment and photographs) and then expect them to come to you begging for a job. The game has changed, and you can't win this battle, the battle against mediocrity, with a shotgun approach.

Talking About A Revolution

2009-01-26T14:14:00.000-08:00

Not long ago, I heard someone use the phrase "A way of seeing things is a way of not seeing things." How true. And well demonstrated recently.

Australia Day is January 26. It's the day when Australians, who are largely the product of immigrant traffic in the 18th and 19th century, celebrate the foundation of our nation. It's a day whn you don't work, probably have a couple of drinks and just do whatever you feel like doing. Go Aussie Go!

This year, that's changed. In 2008, our Prime Minister apologied officially for the Stolen Generation, a program which ran in the 1960s, which removed indigenous Australians (also known as Aboroginals) from their homes, and placing them with foster families. It's not our proudest moment, and I believe our Prime Minister did a brave thing to publicly apologise. Since then, we've also begun publicly acknowledging the traditional tribal ownership of the land on which we have built cities. It's been a big step towards de-segregating our community.

This year, there was some dissent around Australia Day on January 26. To the indigenous population, it was a day of invasion, the day when their subjugation beneath immigrant guns began. Prominent Australians for the first time called to change the date to May 26 - the day that indigenous Australians were given equal rights. I think it's air to suggest that most Australians had never ever considered that at all.

Apart from the cultural significance, here's a thought to leave you with. How do things look from the other side? If' you're a recruiter who services clients, how does your service look to them? If you're a marketer, do the things about your product that you love talking about really matter to the people who buy it?

Try changing your way of looking at the world, and odds are that the world will change its way of looking at you.

Tech Marketers, This Is For You

2009-01-22T18:24:00.000-08:00

Technology is moving fast. No one disputes that. It's a world that's daily becoming a strange blend of connection and isolation, where an ever-increasing number of influences bombard you with media, knowledge, advertising and social conscience issues. It's a world where the competition for share of mind is fiercer, and the cynicism of the average consumer continues to rise.

My product is a combination of hope and experience. I sell the way it feels when you go to work for a certain company. I don't recruit - I attract, converse, engage as the voice of a business, then hand over the reins to a skilled communicator who can convince a potential new hire to join us. It's a great job, in a difficult market (engineering), because the product is pretty good. And it's fun to find new avenues to show people just what we're like.

My recent experiments and MASSIVE absorption in social media techniques, tools and platforms has produced a curious by-product. I now don't talk the same language as anyone anymore.

I tried to calculate the odds of the perfect applicant, who is happy with his employment with a rival firm, being attracted to the business through a single newspaper ad in our Saturday daily. To the best of my woeful maths skills, it's 1/1,658, 237, 990. Not great odds.

So instead, I used that number to convince a manager to build an interactive recruitment platform to attract a range of engineers in a specific field from overseas. I presented to him and his team about the possibilities of inviting people through LinkedIn, using Twitter to update people on project wins, posting Day In The Life videos of his star performers on YouTube and linking them back to the site. I built a solution that didn't rely (for one) ona newspaper ad, but used a range of print, press and online channels to attract people who are genuinely happy with their jobs.

I got a blank look from the whole room. "What's a micro-site?" asked a manager. "Is it a web thing?" I was shattered.

I forgot the first rule. If you're trying to bring innovation to the table, don't start with the tools. Start with the vision. Start with what people will be able to do, and keep the tools to yourself.

(Needless to say, after half an hour explaining the whole thing, the manager said "Press ads are nice though. Who uses the internet to look for a job? Why not just use [insert job board here]?" Oh dear.)

Reactive, Responsive Or Pre-Emptive?

2009-01-21T16:07:00.000-08:00

Paraphrased, there's a section from one of Seth Godin's inspirational tomes that defines the difference between reaction, response and proaction. Essentially, reacting is involuntary, and usually excessive and frantic. Response is a considered address to a raised issue or stimulus. Proaction is presenting the solution before the problem, finding the answer to a question before it's asked.

Hearing this, I tried to apply this kind of thinking to the employment reputation management space. We already assume that there are hundreds of conversations happening amongst out employees and their friends, contacts, colleagues, etc. We HOPE those conversations are showing that working with this business is a positive, enjoyable experience.

We also know that building a brand isn't really about having ads that look the same anymore. It isn't red cans that sell Coke. It's what those red cans represent - fun, good times, social interaction with your mates. Running press adverts to attract people is a strong message to the active market that you're looking for people.

Except even then, it's pretty reactive, isn't it? Those people are already on the open market, and you've already got the role open. Your top-class potential new hires ( I hate the word 'candidates') are more than likely not looking for a new job, and almost certainly won't be looking on the exact day you advertise the role, in the paper (or on the website) you use. They're a difficult audience to reach in any structured way, because they probably don't want to hear from you.

So how do you go from reaction to proaction? Stop advertising the jobs and start talking about the people.

Ideally, the ideal person for your next opening knows about your company already. They've heard of you, and they probably know someone who's worked for you. They may even have worked for you before. They're going to have a perception of your emplyoment experience from their friends, your ads, your website, their interaction with you and plenty more. They're going to have a mix of messages about you that are split between marketing/HR approved ideas and unofficial observations. Your goal is to swing that perception across to the accurate, honest side of the spectrum. Using advertising is only going to get you so far,, unless you drastically change the direction of the message. Because it's not about you - it's about them.

Get your people to talk about themselves. Invite them to blog, or record an interview that's easily accessible, about their experience in the company. Give them a video camera and get them to record something they think shows what their life with you is like. Post it somewhere highly visible and watch the commentary come in from the world. That commentary is the unofficial view of your business, and by making the conversation relevant and public, you can respond to issues strategically as they are raised. More importantly, you aren't waiting to be asked "What's it like to work there?" You're telling people in advance, and giving them more reason to come to you before they start trawling SEEK, or CareerBuilder, or JobFox, or any of the other job boards out there.

You don't want to be one of the good employers in your field. You want to be THE employer of choice. The best. The sexiest. The one with the line around the corner. You won't get there until you start framing the brand around the conversation. Shouting at people doesn't win them over. But answering their questions does, particularly when you answer them first.

Recruitment and Facebook

2009-01-20T16:59:00.000-08:00

As I get more and more into the 'social media as a recuritment tool' space, and read some of the ideas punted around by US based recruiters (who are always going to be a little ahead of us) I'm getting worried. Don't get me wrong - I'm no Luddite, and I think there are great applications for social technology. But I'm concerned about how these suggestions apply to internal recuiters.

Internal recruiters are the mouthpiece of a brand, not just an opportunity. When you;re in an in-house role, your job isn't just to fill a role, but to add to an existing team that's already a part of yor 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 wihtin 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.

How do you apply culture to sharking for resumes on other peopel's websites, or on LinkedIn, or Facebook, or Flickr, or Twitter, or anything else? Identifying that there's talent using a specific platform is one thing, but how do you get them to connect with your brand, not just your individual identity? In order to give them the brand experience, they have to have something they can marinade in. I don't think you can do that unless you already have that brand portal on the platform you're frantically trawling for resumes.

Does this mean our brand has to be everywhere the people we want could possibly be?
Or is it already?

Talking isn't communicating

2009-01-19T17:44:00.000-08:00

I'm on a conference call. Right now. It's between about fourteen people, and it happens once a month. And I'm nearly asleep.

What concerns me is not that the call is particularly boring (although it is). The subject matter is hardly exciting (it's about recruitment practices in an engineering firm) but that's not the problem either. There are two problems, and they're fairly simple ones.

The first one is that these people are all communicators. They're all recruiters - people whose business it is to talk to other people. To exhort opportunity. To question and converse and probe and uncover. They are doing none of this at the moment. This is a shopping list of what people are working on. There's no idea-based debate or discussion - it's pure justification of the function.

The second problem is this - they all knew it was coming. This call happens once a month, and all of them have an opportunity to present a message or something to bring to the table. Outside of this call, there's a lot of whinging about how no one is listened to and how impossible it is to get an idea floated. And yet - give them a forum, and they're silent as graves.

One of the core values of this team is supposed to be communication. Not just talking. And certainly not just talking about what it is you're doing to earn a pay cheque every month. Among other things, it's this kind of endless shopping-list meeting that gives HR a bad reputation.

So I've changed it. I've just set up a recruitment SharePoint site to try and engender a different, more collaborative kind of communication. The kind that yields a discussion, not just a list of what youre' doing. That doesn't work online.

If you've got somethign to communicate, make it something people want to listen to, and will remember. If what you have to say isn't interesting enough for me to listen to, I won't be listening.

Systems and Legacies

2009-01-18T16:13:00.000-08:00

Part of my role involves updating a company wide intranet for the HR function. It was redesigned last year to be more user friendly and easier to navigate. By and large, it's succeeded, which makes the busines shappy and most of the people in HR less likely to receive random phone calls.

When the current interface was designed, it was universalyl accepted that the menus which were in place wouldn't change very often, and as such, they were built using Photoshop. I don't have a problem with Photoshop (we're friends, although we occasionally get on each other's nerves) but I do have a problem with this type of Photoshop.

Because it just doesn't make sense.

The person who designed this interface is long gone, and because he was a contractor, he didn't leave much in the way of instructions on how things worked. I know how to do the editing in Photoshop, although I'm the only person here that does. The CMS system our intranet uses is difficult to use when editing text - positining images is extremely difficult unless you have a comprehensive knowledge of the tools. Something no one in the team has.

This leads me to today's sermon (just kidding). If you're going to put in a system that is going to require adjustments, revision, etc - think about your legacy for the system. Our intranet looks great, but it's now almost impossible to alter. We will actually be better off replacing all the menus with a new interface. Which, while not a huge job, is just another thing we should have had to do.

Think about how people who come after the people wh come after you will know what you know about what you do. You'd be surprised how much more you'll think about what it is you know.

The Problem With Oversharing

2009-01-17T22:10:00.000-08:00

Last night, on Facebook, I noticed that one of my friends had joined a group about breastfeeding. I couldn 't quite get the sense of what the group was, simply that it was a dig at Facebook, so I clicked on it and read a bit about what it was and why it had been started.

Apparently, a group of people felt that it was 'wrong' of Facebook to have categorized photos of mothers breastfeeding their kids as 'obscene'. This group of people decided that they would start a group to protest Facebook's decision, and gain supoprt for the right to show these photos on Facebook.

This leads me to two points;

One, it's great to see community groups getting started on Facebook. If there is a cause you feel strongly about, and there isn't already a Facebook group supporting it, then I highly recommend starting one. Because Facebook does the work of telling your friends which causes you support and gives you easy tools to help you support the same causes, it's easy to connect with your liek minded friends. Hooray.

However...

My second point is about oversharing information. I'm not contesting the right to show photos of yourself doing whatever you want to your friends. If you honestly feel it's necessary to show your friends/co-workers/long-lont relatives on Facebook what your child looks like when it's breastfeeding, I'm wondering why you can't just use email. We've become, through the public face of Facebook profiles, capable of disseminating loads of information, with a view to adding to our identity.

There's no shortage of stories already about employers using Facebook to disciminate against potential new hires, or to check out possible candidates. The same is true of everyone you connect with through that platform, or any other online networking platform. Whatever information you put up there, people will assume that it's intentional. That you wanted them to see it. That it's relevant to their connection with you.

One of my colleagues has already de-friended all his work Facebook contacts, because one of them contacted his boss to report that his status update 'looked like he was taking a sickie'. He wasn't, but that isn't the point. The point is that you can never trust that the spirit with which you shared the information is the same spirit people receive it in. Plus, you really have no control about what people do with your information once it's online.

Doyou really need to tell everyone everything in order to feel fulfilled as a human being?
I hope not.

What Battle Are You Fighting?

2009-01-15T17:09:00.000-08:00

I spoke to a friend last night about graduate recruitment, which is something that just about every mid-to-large employer struggles with. My friend works for an obscure government department, and mentioned during our discussion that his mandate inc reating the campaign was that he 'not attract nerds.' Given that his department is largely involved in federal communications infrastructure, this struck me as odd.

"Who told you that?"

He replied "HR did. They want people from across the board."

I asked him if he'd met with the people who will be managing these graduates. No, he hadn't.
I asked him if he'd met with any of the existing graduates. Nope, nothing there either.
I asked him if he had an idea of what made a successful graduate in that environment. No, HR didn't like to 'pigeonhole' people like that.

Fundamentally this feels like an error. If you're going to spend an obscene amount of money to attract people nationally for 30 positions, shouldn't you know what sort of people you want?

My friend replied that "HR wanted to get as many applications as possible to show how effective the campaign was. They want the best graduates out there. "

"Best at what?"

"Well, you know, the best."

We talked through the point together for a little. If you don't know who you're marketing a job to, how can you make it sound exciting? If you have no idea what the ideal person wants from a role, how can you give it to them?

My advice to my friend? Talk to the managers, and if they want nerds, work with HR to understand that it's nerds that the business needs. If HR isn't working for the good of the business, why are they part of the equation?