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.”

Continue reading

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!

Open Letter to Job Seekers

After a comment on my blog (yes, some people read it!) asking “what is an exact fit?” and the general exacerbation that the job seeking process causes most job seekers, I thought I’d write an open letter to all job seekers, allowing them a peek into the recruiting process:

Dear Job Seeker,

We know you are frustrated with the job search process.  We understand that you apply and apply and are rarely granted an interview or even an email communication telling you why you were not selected.  We also understand that even when you get a phone call or email telling you that you were not selected, you would like details on why.  Here is a glimpse into the world of recruiting and HR so perhaps you will understand the method to the madness.

• Our lawyers prohibit us from giving you detailed feedback on why you were not selected for an interview.  We can give you a broad category of why but not specifics.  Why?  Because you sue us.  If the company gives you feedback that you misinterpret as discrimination or bias, we get sued.  We mitigate our risk by being vague.
• We have a timer on positions and have to get them filled.  Even in this economy, most positions have a cost of vacancy associated with them.  As such, we have to fill our roles in a timely fashion.  Sometimes, this means that the best candidate for the job is not considered because they applied late to the opening.  This TIMING element of filling jobs is the most misunderstood by job seekers.  We hire the best candidate in a given timeframe otherwise we’d never fill our jobs because we’d always be waiting for YOU to apply!
• You apply to the wrong job a lot.  Sometimes it’s because you think by applying to every job we have posted, you’ll get noticed.  You do, but not in a good way.  Most of the time it’s because we’ve posted a vague, laundry list of requirements that could be you but is probably not.  We need to do better and really put a great job description up.  A video of the hiring manager telling you what she needs in the ideal candidate would be best.  We’re working on it.
• We have less jobs to fill (75% less in some cases) but we get between 100 – 300+ applications for every job we have posted.  Most recruiters carry between 20 – 25 openings.  Do the math.  To require that we personally contact each person and give them feedback and advice is simply not reasonable.  We are trying to let you know your status.  If you get an email from us we really ARE doing our job.
• Interviewing and hiring are human processes and as such, are inherently flawed.  Recruiters make suggestions on who to interview – sometimes geting it wrong but mostly getting it right (meaning the people who are interviewed are good candidates).  Hiring Managers make hiring decisions – sometimes getting it wrong but mostly getting it right (meaning the person they hire is usually a good hire for the job).

We empathize with your frustration (there are a lot of us out of work today too) and just want to tell you that we are doing the best we can and are constantly looking for ways to get better.  One way we’ve found is AllianceQ – where at least we can offer you the option of continuing your job search with our fellow Member companies and 3000 small and medium sized businesses.

Good luck with your job search

Sincerely,

Corporate Recruiting

Revolutions are Uncomfortable Things

After hearing that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer ceased operations yesterday to become the 12th major newspaper to shutter its doors I began looking into this momentous change we are experiencing.

On the website “Newspaper Death Watch” (http://www.newspaperdeathwatch.com/) (yes, I don’t like the name either) an article sums up the situation for newspapers:

The game is over for newspapers. Nothing can save the business, so it’s pointless to try. We’re in the middle of a revolution and revolutions are uncomfortable things because “The old stuff gets broken faster than the new stuff is put in its place.”

The newspaper industry, like the automotive industry and the financial industry, is an institution in the United States.  Even 5 years ago no one would have imagined that we could be facing a time when major cities were “newspaperless”.  So what is happening?

Web sites like Craigslist have been to classified ads what the internal combustion engine was to horse-drawn buggies. The stock prices of most newspaper publishers have dropped more than 90 percent from their peaks.  Couple this with an amazing amount of debt taken on in the last 10 years as major publishers bought up smaller competitors and viola’ – the death of an industry.  Maybe.

Monster and Careerbuilderbattled over who would run the newspapers’ employment sections and traded the honor witheach other but for what?  It seems that even with big board names behind the employment sections, people were relying on them less and less.  While people were running from classified employment ads, they were running TO Linkedin and other ‘new’ ways to find work.  Revolutions are uncomfortable things.

I believe this is the next “revolution” we’ll see.  At least I’m hopeful that we will.  Just like no one wants newspapers to completely disappear (after all it IS where most of the serious reporting and reporters still reside) I’m not advocating that the big boards  disappear.  But like the newspapers, the days of “post and pray” recruiting would be a desired victim of a job board revolution.  The big boards have their place in an overall strategy but for too many recruiting departments that place takes up too much precious budget money to prove truly valuable.  Remember that a large percentage of Recruiters report getting a LOT of candidates from big boards but less than 20% of all employees actually report finding employment through the big boards.

If Craigslist can automate, facilitate and communicate better than your old classified, is it not too far fetched to imagine that a technology is coming that can do the same to “post and pray” recruiters?

It is all a question of “value” and who can provide the value faster, easier and with less cost.  If the road from consumer (Hiring Manager) to product (candidate) can be streamlined by taking out the middle person who adds little to no value to the process then the “revolution” is for the better.

The only way to reduce the discomfort of revolution is to find a way to add value to a process.  As we are seeing with the newspaper industry, if you are not adding value, you are not going to survive.

Stress Test Your Employer Brand

Living in Charlotte, I can’t help but be engrossed in the banking crisis.  Afterall, we are the second largest financial center to NYC in the country and my property values are directly tied to these firms making it and not going under!

The recent conversations have been about “stress testing” each bank.  Here’s how McKinsey describes what that means;

to identify, proactively, the bad assets on bank balance sheets, using financial models to project future loan values and loss rates under different economic scenarios.

Using this methodology, couldn’t a company determine if their employment brand was set up to credate future “values” vs. future “losses” in human capital?  Yes, it might sound far fetched but let me run with it for the moment.  Here are some steps to take to Stress Test your employer Brand:

Step 1: Know what it is. 

• Seems simple but many companies have no idea what their employer brand Actually is.  They might know what they WANT it to be, but testing reality takes courage AND tenacity. 
• Survey  new hires “what brought you to XYZ Co.?”, survey at first year anniversary and each year after “what keeps you here at XYZ Co.?” 

Step 2: Distill the brand message to values instead of losses.

• Now take those answers and cross reference them with performance reviews.  What do you find?  
• Are your low performers are telling you they love free soft drinks in the break rooms and the 40 hour work weeks.  Is your brand mistaking this for “work/life balance” in your message and therefore attracting low performers? 
• Are your top performers telling you they love the challenging work and opportunity for advancement?  Is your brand messaging inclusive of these aspects of your culture or are you afriad this message will scare people off?
• Adjust your employer brand message attract the top 1/3 of your performers (based on what they are telling you), not the masses.

Step 3: Get it out there.

• Once you are confident your brand message is targeted at the TOP performers in your company you are ready to get the word out.
• Many people confuse “branding” with “advertising” and they are not the same.  Your brand is a living thing, your company’s DNA and you can’t create an advertising campaign to get the word out, your employees need to be getting it out.
• Corporate blogs, The Vault, Facebook, Linkedin etc.  It’s a social networking world and if your top performers are getting the viral word out that your company is a great place to grow and expand yourself the message is more believable than if your marketing department puts it out.

What do you think?  Have we Stress Tested our employment brand via the McKinsey description?

to identify, proactively, the employer brand messages in use by our company, using competency models and employee feedback to project future human capital attraction rates with a focus on quality under different messaging scenarios.

Hey it’s Friday, what else do you have to think about this weekend?

Cheers!

The Oscars – Extreme Branding for Job Seekers

As I watched the annual parade of glam last night, it dawned on me that each and every one of the movie stars is an extreme brand manager.  In any economy, job holders and job seekers should take notice of how these folks manage their personal brands because, like in Hollywood, it really is all you have to offer.

Top 5 tips from Hollywood’s Extreme Brand Managers: 

Dress.  “Who are you wearing” may not be something that you hear in interviews or after a particularly rousing corporate presentation but it IS noticed by people, some who count and some who don’t.  Presentation is one key to Personal Branding.

Pride.  Being proud can be a slippery slope.  It can escalate you to the front of the pack or relegate you to forever bringing up the rear.  The key in Hollywood is that actors are proud of the “work” not of themselves (for the most part).  Speaking proudly of the work your teams have accomplished in the past is a great way to stand out in a crowd.

Humility.  The balance to #2 is humility.  Being humble is a parallel slope to Pride.  If you are to humble and never speak of YOUR accomplishments you may come off as a coat tail rider.  Be sure to speak proudly of your team’s accomplishments and also of your unique contribution to the organization’s success.

Grace.  I’m always impressed with the Red Carpet ride these stars take and that they are willing to speak to people like Ryan Seacrest and Joan Rivers.  At each interview stop they smile, answer truly inane questions and always thank the microphone monkey as if it was a fantastic experience.  Leaving everyone feeling positive about your interactions with them is one of the fastest ways to get or stay employed.

Gratitude.  Ok, so thanking a handwritten list of everyone who’s ever been part of your career (like some did last night) can come off as contrived, being grateful for those who have made an impact on you and letting them know regularly is crucial.  Read “regularly” because being grateful only when you get laid off (and start re-connecting with everyone in your network because you need them) is the antithesis of gratitude.

I think the greatest job seeker lesson from the Academy Awards last night lies in Slumdog Millionaire taking the night with 8 Oscars.  Why?  Because there were no Brad Pitts, no Meryl Streeps and no Batman special effects.  It was a medium budget foreign film with children and teenagers as stars. 

Proof that success lies, not in what you see and expect, but in what you can imagine and create.

Monster.com – Wrong end of the Moose

Many of you are aware that, for the second time in 18 months, Monster’s database was compromised.  This time the personal information of 1.2 million job seekers was stolen, in 2007 it was the username and passwords of legitimate Recruiters. 

According to the dictionary;

Hack; to damage or injure by crude, harsh, or insensitive treatment; mutilate; mangle:

Using this definition of HACK; we can safely say that Monster’s inability to secure the sensitive data of jobs seekers and paying customers has created the “follow on” hacks below: 

They hacked the confidence of millions of job seekers and paying customers world wide

They hacked the job board industry by creating distrust in eRecruitment

They hacked the hopes and dreams of millions of job seekers who will now get phishing emails instead of bona fide communications for employment

They hacked a percentage of these job seekers lives because they will naively give personal information to criminals who call or email them based on this stolen data

They hacked  customers in 2007 when they used the breach of their database as the reason to squeeze hundreds of thousands of additional license revenue out of us, saying that it was OUR fault for sharing passwords!

 And finally, another definition of HACK from the dictionary – this time in reference to the person who made the decision to spend $3 Million on a Superbowl ad instead of on additional security measures:

Hack
Noun;
1. A person who engages in an activity without talent or skills

Enjoy the humor, marvel at the irony!