When Reality Knocks

For months now I’ve been writing about the Candidate Experience and it’s ever growing importance for Corporations in this economy.

Recently Taleo, in one of its Taleo Cafe presentations, put forth the following research metrics: 

23% of job seekers has been badly treated by a prospective employer.

53% of jobseekers will not purchase products and services if they have been badly treated.

55% tell at least 3 people about their bad experience.

49% of all jobseekers find the lack of acknowledgement of their application the most annoying part of hte recruitment process.

and I would add one of my own: 

100% of job seekers find the lack of closure to their application process (the Black Hole) an unacceptable business practice and all the above metrics apply.

Today is the day to focus on the candidate experience.  This time next year, you’ll be too busy, you’ll be in too many meetings and once again the Candidate will become the victim of a very bad candidate experience with your company.

The Power of Positive

I just read a great article on HR.Com about the benefits of hiring optimistic people.

It is an important article for our current times because there are not a lot of people out there who are exuding happiness, optimism and portraying a positive attitude.  Not blaming many of them but if you are someone who’s been out on several interviews (meaning your resume is getting the attention you desire) but are not getting many call backs or any offers – maybe it isn’t your knowledge and skills, maybe it’s the unspoken words that are killing your chances.  Maybe it’s the lack of a positive attitude.

I’ve interviewed tens of thousands of people in my career and I can say with certainty that there are a large amount of applicants who leave you feeling depressed and run down at the end of an hour phone conversation or in person meeting.  There are also a smaller number of people who you want to invite to have a beer afterwards or that you look forward to meeting after you’ve had a phone call – this is the un-trainable, undeniable power of positive.

In his article, Dr. Mercer talks about focusing on solutions instead of wallowing in the problems you either have or had at your last job.  So many people are happy to use an interview as a “vent” session and then wonder why they didn’t get the job!  When asked about challenges in a behavioral interview, can you really say that your answer leaves people feeling good about how you handled it?  I mean good in a “I feel good”, James Brown way – the “gee, I’d like to work with that person” way?  Probably not.  And it may be killing your chances of finding a job today.

There is a flip-side to this “power of positive” too.  As Recruiters, how are you coming across to your applicants?  Are you leaving them feeling great about their decision to apply for your job or are you treating them like one more hassle in your hassle-filled day?  As many really bad interviews as I’ve had, I’ve also come across way too many recruiters who seemed to feel that a person applying for a job was in imposition on their precious time.  How does that go over with your candidates?  Dr. Mercer has some research that I think is an appropriate answer:

Eye-opening research revealed the more an employee smiles, the happier the customer. Harvard Business Review (5/07, page 24, www.hbr.org) reported Patricia Barger of Bowling Green State U. and Alicia Grandey of Penn State U. studied employees and customers in a coffee shop. They found the more an employee smiled, the more the employee’s customers felt happy with their coffee shop experience.

So I guess the net, net is that Candidates have a better experience when Recruiters are upbeat and positive about their role, the company and the job they have open AND the Recruiters have a better time when the candidates are upbeat, positive and leave the Recruiter/Hiring Manager wanting more time with them.

The magic happens when these two “positives” meet in an interview.  In this case, two positives DO NOT make a negative, they make another very positive.

Storming the Gates

Today, Recruiting departments are seeing a large uptick in the number of applications they are receiving for open positions.  Not surprising news given the economy and unemployment.  But this increase comes even as the number of open positions has plummeted, in some cases up to 70% fewer openings than this time last year.

This “storming the gates” by job seekers (both unemployed and active as well as employed and nervous) is a double edged sword for most companies; on the one hand, your recruitment advertising dollar is producing far greater return than in the recent past but the danger is that your brand is probably suffering.

Why?

Because most companies do not have a robust candidate experience plan in place and are therefore overtly or inadvertently creating a terrible candidate experience with their employment brand.

As we talk to recruitment leaders across the country it seems that most are still focused on the classically conditioned value of a recruiting organization – the candidate to fill a role.  Some have recognized the opportunity to build valuable pipelines of hard to find profiles but with so many people out of work, a pipeline you build today may or may not bear fruit when it all turns around – too much time and too many variables between now and then. 

So what major opportunity are these leaders missing today? 

A once in a lifetime chance to truly separate your brand from the rest of the pack by focusing on the gate storming candidate.

Yes, I said focusing ON- not ignoring, being judgemental of, lambasting around the water cooler or simply disdaining but being and acting GRATEFUL for their application.  Trust me, there will come a day when you will look back and wish you’d not missed this opportunity.

Those companies who treat “candidate service” like “customer service” will win the talent wars always.  It is these companies that people talk about at cocktail parties, church gatherings and other social events.  The candidate you treat well today will lead their friends, families and today, their LinkedIn and Facebook friends to your door. 

So what does it cost you to do this because we all know you have no money right?  Nothing.  Literally not one red cent.  You see, every department, every system in every company is already poised to do it.  What it takes is that “eagle path” I wrote about on Monday – being fearless in your advocacy of these candidates within your company and choosing to focus on what some consider an “intangible” in recruitment – being a company that people WANT to work for.

I have many examples of exactly how this has occurred at companies large and small across the country.  If anyone is interested – they are happy to share the secret sauce of this endeavor.

Remember this, if you choose to ignore this opportunity today, you will not get it again because EVERYONE will be talking about it when talent gets scarce again.

Eagle or Ostrich?

This is a defining time for Recruiting Leadership around the world.  Whether the profession advances in this difficult environment or recedes is dependent upon the decisions being made today at Sr. level meetings in conference rooms across the globe.  These game changing decisions rely on a single personality trait to determine if they advance our profession or drive it deeper into an organization’s basement.

I’m talking about COURAGE - that rare, defining aspect of some people’s personality that allows them to make difficult decisions and advance an industry while their peers sit on their hands.

With the economy stalled at best, VPs of Recruiting are facing a myriad of decisions; reduction of budgets, laying off of contract Recruiters and even some full time staff to accommodate reduction in work (some companies are experiencing 75% fewer openings than this time last year).  Most are spending late hours worrying about their own positions and future in the industry.  Add bankruptcies, foreclosures and mergers and the world can seem like a very precarious place from where they sit.

Typically I’ve witnessed two reactions to this scenario.  In 2001-2002 there was a micro 2009 in the dot.com industry – companies failed, companies merged and most of my contacts in the industry got out and into other professions.  The few that remained took one of the two paths I’m referencing;

The Ostrich Path – put your head down, do your job, don’t ask questions, don’t rock the boat, refuse any ideas that are not “safe” or traditional and teach your whole department to do the same.  Oh yea, and fire anyone who refuses to comply with the “head in the sand” mentality.  OR;

The Eagle Path - recognize the opportunity in front of you and seize the moment; innovate, challenge the status quo, research new and different business practices to make your department stronger, more respectable in the organization and a valued thought leader in the industry.

Today in my role outside of a corporate recruiting department I see these two paths daily.  I had a meeting last week with an SVP of Recruiting at a Fortune 10 company.  After an hour conversation this person was eager to hear more about what we are doing (innovation) and how we can help him advance his organization.  Clearly an “EAGLE PATH” Leader.  No fear, no excuses, no reasons for being too busy to talk – just an Eagle.  Unfortunately, this is the exception to the rule.  We see many more Ostriches than Eagles these days.  So many of this Eagle’s peers are scrambling to make sense of their world, cover their butts and keep the peace that they can’t see the forest for the trees.  I feel for these folks – it must be disheartening to find reasons NOT to do great things and then find out that people around you are.  It must be tough dinner conversation to explain to your spouse “I kept my head above water today, I didn’t ruffle any feathers and my badge should work tomorrow when I go back to do it all over again”. 

These are challenging times but in any conflict lies opportunity.  In order to see this you have to have the right perspective and vision.  From an Eagle’s point of view – it is easy to see the opportunity, swoop in and take advantage of it.  From the Ostrich’s point of view – the view never changes, its just sand.

Why Is Change So Hard?

My company is trying to change an industry, an industry that hasn’t really changed much in the 17 years I’ve been in it.  Apparently change is hard for human beings:

How many people were still driving their supercharged V8 super SUV when gas was over $5 a gallon?

How many people continue to rebuild a house on the same plot of land even after multiple floods wipe them out?

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Fill vs Find – The Politics of Measurement

Coming off of ERE, there are always some very interesting articles as the organization awards best practices and innovative strategies.

One of the most interesting was Todd Raphael’s piece on “Fill vs. Find”.  In it he quotes Steve Lowisz from Qualigenceand Tony Blake of DaVita (Recruiting Department of The Year Award winner this ERE!) as saying that a better metric than “time to fill” is “time to find”.  Great stuff and I couldn’t agree more.

However, there are challenges inherent in measuring “time to find” and even more challenging, using it with your client groups.  I’ll explain.  Tony defines “time to find” as;

This is the time beginning when a job request comes in, ending in the time the recruiter sends the candidate to the hiring manager.

I prefer “time to submit” for this definition or even better as my friend Todd Noebel commented on the ERE article, “time to slate“.  Basically you start the clock when the requisition is approved in the system (not when the hiring manager says, “hey be on the lookout for ___ I may have an opening” – this is usually when the hiring manager starts their clock!) and measure until you have a slate of qualified, interested and attractable candidates. STOP. 

This is “time to slate” and should be used to measure your sourcing effectiveness and nothing else.  Why “time to slate” vs “time to find” or “time to present”?  Because you can submit your first candidate at day 3 and then not another one until day 10.  Using 3 days as “time to find” isn’t truly representative of your sourcing effectiveness.  “Time to Slate” means you are done sourcing and are moving to the interview process.  By agreeing up front what constitutes a “slate” you can now stop the clock on the sourcing and move to the next phase of the process.  Now you can effectively measure your interview process effectiveness and this is where recruiting departments start to waiver on separating the two measurements.

Why?  Because measuring the interview process means measuring and holding your hiring managers accountable!  I’ve advocated hiring manager scorecards in organizations and promptly been tossed out of meetings.  For some reason most recruiters and recruitment leaders shudder at the prospect of telling a hiring manager that the reason they lost their #1 choice of candidate was because they dragged the process out for a month or so (usually needing to see “more” candidates right?) and they took another job. 

Follow me here;

My hiring manager and I agreed a “slate” was 5 QIA candidates.  I delivered the 5 (which she accepted) by day 10 and we went to the interview process on day 11.  Her candidate accepted an offer on day 45.  The difference between “time to slate TTS” (10 days) and “time to fill TTF” (45 days) measures only one thing – how effectively are we moving candidates through the process which is “time to hire TTH” (35 days).

TTF(45) = TTS(10) + TTH(35)

So in our example, the interview process took 35 days.  Now whether this is good or bad depends on a multitude of factors but only by measuring it can we uncover it and coach our hiring manager if necessary.

I think the best thing is that Tony and DaVita clearly are into measuring those things that are important and give you vision to your process.  Congratulations Tony and thanks for bringing this to light.

An ERE Summary

Last week I traveled across country to sunny San Diego for ERE – The Recruitment industry’s largest gathering and trade show – normally.

But we are not in normal times and that was evident at the SD Convention Center where the girth of the venue dwarfed the actual event.  It was obvious to all that our ranks have been reduced and of the 250 – 300 (estimated) attendees there was not one who wasn’t grateful to have the opportunity to attend.  That can’t be said for all the vendors as there were some empty booths and notable absences.

As the attendees passed by our booth I was sure to ask them about the sessions going on and what they thought.  For anyone who has attended an ERE, the answers won’t suprise you.  The highlights were a live feed of Kevin Costner (noted Recruiting pundit? No, investor in the company GreenJobInterview.com who sponsored the session) speaking on recruiting and someone actually qualified to do so, Vicki Perry, Director of Strategic Staffing at Avery Dennison who’s session was the buzz at lunch on Wednesday.

But the same ERE complaint was echoed by almost everyone I spoke to; too much philosophy by the same pundits and not enough real world “how to get it done” by practitioners.  I think we all have recognized this fact with the big “shows” – too many people telling you how great life could be for Recruiting if you could; (fill in the blank) get hiring managers to behave, get candidates to behave, innovate, streamline etc, etc.

I got the distinct feeling that the lucky folks who got some travel dollars and were asked to attend ERE this spring were tasked with bringing back real solutions, whether in practices or technology – go find us something that will make a difference.  They saw a couple new items in the trade show and may have heard a couple of tidbits in the sessions that ran for three days but overall, they were left wanting/needing more.

For those of you lucky enough to stumble onto some travel dollars in the fall, there is a show that is NOT in Hollywood Florida that promises to actually TEACH you something.  It is the First Annual Recruitment Learning Conference put on by Qualigence, Inc.  This is a new format designed to really teach you how to do something in your department.  You will want to check it out and attend if you can.  For more details go to www.qualigence.com .

I hope to see you in September in Chicago and am sure to see some of you in Florida again for yet another ERE mini-mega show.

We ARE the Stimulus Plan

How to simulate the economy seems to be the front and center conversation in the media and in homes across the country.  When AIG isn’t dominating the headlines and people are really thinking about solutions, they think of economic stimulus plans.  Most agree that creating jobs is task #1 and the thinking goes that if more people are working, more people are positive and therefore more people are spending money.  Basically any Government stimulus is simply supposed to spark OUR (the consumer) spending so there is more money in the system and we can return to our times of prosperity.

But wait, taking government stimulus money and repaving roads (like Bev Perdue is doing here in North Carolina) is wasting the taxpayer’s money.  It creates short term jobs but not long term employment and confidence. 

In essence, the government leadership is probably the least qualified to stimulate our economy and create jobs and confidence in the working population.  So who then should take the reigns?

YOU.

You, the American worker.  You the American entrepreneur.  You the American genius.  Why?  Because it’s always been YOU that has stimulated this economy, not government programs! 

How do we do it?  INNOVATE!!  Every age of innovation has created more prosperity than any government stimulus plan since the “New Deal” of the 1930’s.  Think about it.  The last time you were probably feeling flush and having the time of your life was in the 90’s.  The technology boom was in full swing and we were all jumping on the World Wide Web.  The age of the internet has spawned more innovation than we’ve seen in the last 50 years.  So it starts with innovation.  I’m watching Steve Wosniak on Dancing With The Stars and although he’s a really bad dancer, the guy is a certified American Genious.  He created the Apple Computer and launched the company behind your iPod, iPhone and i-everything. 

As innovation spurs new product development, consumers buy and buy and buy.  So I’m advoacting a “new” New Deal based on radical innovation.  In the last 5 years, there has been little innovation.  The IPhone created a stir, Blackberrys get smaller but there has been little to get the consumer inside us all excited and spending money.  More than ever, we need to innovate and create some excitement in our world.

But Phil, I’m a Recruiter – what can I do to innovate?  Anything you can think of.  Remember, part of the New New Deal is that people need to get working.  Let your mind go and takes some chances and risks – these are the building blocks of innovation.  Start that new recruiting business, moonlight helping unemployed people figure out how to get the jobs that are out there – do that one thing that you’ve been thinking of for years but that little voice in your head always says “no one will buy that”.  They will if you take the chance.

This country was built on the risk-taking, innovative backs of the people of the country.  We have to stop looking for help from our Government and take control of our own stimulus options.

Frustrated Job Seekers

Here is an interesting article that comments on the frustration most job seekers experience in online recruiting.  Speaking of the difficult time job seekers have of actually finding their “dream job” online, Jennifer Hamm says;

Still, trolling job boards remains a very time consuming process, contends Richard H. Beatty, author of “The Ultimate Job Search.” There are over 40,000 career websites, including mega job boards, industry-specific sites and listings on company sites.

“Job seekers are faced with the daunting task of somehow screening through this bewildering array to discover those sites that will prove most productive for them,” Beatty says. “Huge amounts of precious job-search time can be completely wasted.”

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Yankees or Oakland A’s?

I recently made my annual pilgrimage to Phoenix for Major League Baseball’s spring training.  On the plane, I was reading and a collision of thoughts occurred in my head that would rival that collision at home plate between Pete Rose and Ray Fosse in the 1970 All-Star Game. 

For any non baseball fans out there, stick with this blog post as it WILL be brought around to talent acquisition, I promise.
First is an interesting article in last week’s Wall Street Journal.  In it, the authors propose that one of the leading causes of our current economic downturn was the profound short term thinking of Chief Executives and Boards of Directors.  They assert that the “short term gains at all costs” mentality of corporate America is a huge factor in this unprecedented economic downturn and that the people who run the most powerful companies in our country took their eye off the ball (baseball analogy) of business 101; building solid products, selling them at a reasonable price and supporting what you sell for the long term.  Granted that some of this “short timer” disease was driven by shareholder pressure to continue to grow wealth, the feduciary responsibility of Corporate America has to have a longer horizon than quarter over quarter growth according to the authors.

So what does that have to do with baseball and even more unclear, what does any of this have to do with talent accquisition??

Well, in the age of free agency in baseball, the game of building a winning team has become divided into two camps;

CAMP B: buy the talent with the best statistics from last year in the hopes you can win a pennant this year (Yankees) and

CAMP A: bring in not yet great, high trajectory, under the radar players for a fraction of the cost and grow a sustainable winning team over time (Athletics). 

There are a lot of arguments on both sides (As always, I met my Father and Brother in Phoenix, both avid Yankee fans and proponents of the “buy and try” mentality of the Steinbrenner family) but I’m making my case for the longer term horizon strategy of the Oakland Athletics.  Without going into a huge analysis (this is, afterall, a human capital blog, not one from Sports Illustrated) the Oakland A’s manage to make the playoffs or come within a few games almost every year.  They win and are fun to watch. They take calculated risks on young players and grow them in the organization for as many years as they can before the Yankees buy them. (Jason Giambi, Scott Brosius etc.) The fans in Oakland love them, even the years they come up just short of the playoffs.  Contrast that with the Yankee strategy where winning this season justifies Wall Street type compensation with short term required payoffs (in 2008, the Yankees spent over $420 Million on CC Sabathia, Mark Teixeira and A.J. Burnett) Their fans demand a pennant every year (just like the shareholders demand strong growth in profits and share value) especially now that they pay $70 for the cheap seats at the new Yankee Stadium.   I don’t know a Yankee fan that would be satisfied with a good run at a title this year and welcome back the team from 2009 in 2010 if they didn’t make the playoffs.  By the way, in the last 7 years (when the Yankees went really “out there” with the money they pay these guys) the yankees have only been to one World Series (in 2003) and they lost to……The Marlins (another Athletics-minded, lower budget team by the way) proving that chemistry, not just talent, counts.

Ok, so now you see the paralells; Yankees/corporate governance of the 21st century and Atheletics/desired corporate governance post economic recovery.

Now to wrap it up with the final parallel: the mentality of most companies in hiring and building teams.  “Shadow of the leader” as one of my past managers put it, dictates that the behavior modelled by the leader is what the teams beneath them see as the behavior that is desired, even when it might be the wrong behavior.  Just look at the Stamford Bank executive now under indigtment for misleading athorities in their investigation of her crooked boss!  So if the CEO’s lead by “short term gains at all costs” mentality, then it follows that this trickles down to every level of the organization.  Hiring Managers demand “no assembly required” candidates from Recruiters and many “not yet great, high trajectory, under the radar players” go unnoticed and unhired by the company.  Is your company the Yankees or the Athletics?

I’m not saying that Recruiters can fix the economy or baseball but I do believe they can take the lead in fixing the “no assembly required” hiring mentality of their hiring managers.  For a step by step “how to” guide on doing this, read Billy Ball – the story of Billy Bean, the guy who changed the mentality of the Oakland A’s hiring model.

It’s going to be a long season and the environment is ripe for a change of strategy.  Pick up some high level prospects from the waiver wire and be prepared for a champagne shower in 2011 when your “unknowns” of 2009 turn into hall of famers!