Church of the Customer: Can I Get an Amen?
- Author: Amitai Givertz
- Posted: February 28, 2007
- Category: Recruitment Communications, Employment Branding, Business Matters
- Tags: Case Studies, Employee Retention, Employment Branding, Recruiting 2.0, Recruitment Communications, Success Stories, Testimonials
- Comments: 0
“Customer Evangelism” is an interesting concept especially when applied to employer branding and managing the candidate experience and/or as it relates to employee engagement and retention. But it doesn’t stop there.
I am interested in hearing from anyone who may have looked at how these concepts play out across the entire recruitment process - the customer being either candidates, hiring managers, employees and even users of recruiting products and services where the impact of customer evangelism was actually measured. Is there anyone out there willing to help?
If you are unfamiliar with what customer evangelism is, Steve Rubel posts a fair bit on Micro Persuasion although I think Ben McConnell or Jackie Huba may have coined the term in one of their numerous books on the subject. Both post on the Church of the Customer site. Jason Whitman covers a variety of employment related issues on his blog Brand Love Hate. Also, USNews.com also has a good article that was published as this concept began emerging as a strategic play: Spreading the Word. It’s a pretty good introduction I think.
Y, Oh, Y, Delilah: Generations Apart
- Author: Amitai Givertz
- Posted: February 27, 2007
- Category: Recruiting, Talent Management
- Tags: Diversity and Inclusion, Diversity Recruitment, Recruitment Communications, White Papers
- Comments: 3
While researching stuff for a presentation on the multigenerational workforce I have come across all sorts of interesting material from a surprising array of sources. Here are some gems from Deloitte Consulting who consistently produce invaluable research, if you’re a Boomer that is:
Generational Talent Management Strategies to Attract and Engage Generation Y in the U.S. Banking & Securities Industries focuses on the financial services industry but as you read it through it becomes clear that the references could apply to any number of industries.
Corporate Brain Drain – this is arguably the single most concerning impediment to long-term sustainable growth…The contributing forces are familiar: an aging talent pool combined with a diminishing pipeline. Further compounding this issue is a changing market landscape that requires new perspectives and skills. To remain competitive, executives in banking and securities [read healthcare or what-have-you] must overcome past negative perceptions created by self-interested employers and market their brand to their newest workforce consumer – Generation Y.
Gen Y: Connecting Across the Generations for Effective Results is a quick read that accompanied a podcast by the same title. You can listen to here or download it as an MP3 file…
As Generation Y dives into the workforce, one thing is becoming abundantly clear: these young people are different. Their motivation, their technical sophistication, and their demand for respect and responsibility are leaving many company executives to wonder: “What should we do with Generation Y?”
Also from Leah Reynolds, Stan Smith and the Deloitte crew:
- Communicating Total Rewards to the Generations
- Connecting Across the Generations in the Workplace
- It’s 2008: Do You Know Where Your Talent Is?
Good stuff and more to come. Stay posted.
Bells & Whistles: The RCI Recruitment Solutions Blog
- Author: Amitai Givertz
- Posted: February 23, 2007
- Category: Tools and Resources, Business Matters, Blogging
- Tags: No Tags
- Comments: 13
It doesn’t seem that long ago that I was firing-up my new and spiffy IBM ThinkPad 360 wondering what the heck this Mosaic worldwide web browser thing was. When I think of all that has modulated and demodulated since, and how our industry has been evolving along the way, the only constant in this warping of time and space is my own deer-in-the-lights techno-paralysis. I guess I just have a thing about machines.
So, here we are. We have gone from half a million jobs online in 1995 to half a million job boards now. We have come from newsgroups in cyberspace to News Corp and MySpace. It’s mind-boggling. But, just as I was relieved to get my hands on John Sumser’s Internet Recruiters’ Survival Guide back in the mid-nineties – yes, I’m a survivor – I was just as thankful to find Trevor Cook and Lee Hopkins’, Social Media: An Introduction to the Power of “Web 2.0”. At last, a primer for all those things that leave me befuddled.
The white paper aptly starts by citing The Cluetrain Manifesto, itself a set of 95 theses, compiled as a pitch for businesses to adapt to working within a newly-connected marketplace. The Cluetrain Manifesto examines how the internet facilitates a new relationship between markets, consumers and organizations; suggesting how organizations must respond to this new, emerging paradigm. For us, we see its impact on everything from employer branding and recruiting, to retention.
Likewise, as social media and networking are playing their part in transforming the business of recruiting, we feel that at RCI, we too can adapt to the needs of our market and consumers to everyone’s competitive advantage. As we evolve new approaches to finding, attracting, hiring, engaging, retaining, and growing talent for our organization and our clients’, similarly we must evolve new ways of communicating and connecting with our growing universe of consumers. We’re getting clued in, if you will:
A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter – and getting smarter faster than most companies. These markets are conversations. Their members communicate in language that is natural, open, honest, direct, funny and often shocking. Whether explaining or complaining, joking or serious, the human voice is unmistakably genuine. It can’t be faked.
In the same way that you can leave a comment on our blog posts – participate in our “naked conversations” – you can do the same pretty much everywhere on our corporate website. We encourage your feedback, thoughts, comments and suggestions. This site is for you. It is for us. In the meantime enjoy our Bells & Whistles: The RCI Recruitment Solutions’ Blog. Use it. Come back often. Choo-choo!
It’s a Wrap. You’re Hired!
- Author: Amitai Givertz
- Posted: February 22, 2007
- Category: Recruiting, Tools and Resources
- Tags: Internet Media, Media, Recruiting 2.0, Recruitment Communications, Sourcing Strategy
- Comments: 5
TIME Magazine posts an article on video resumes, It’s a Wrap. You’re Hired! The piece is written by Lisa Takeuchi Cullen and examines yet another new recruiting tool, one that remains unproven as regards its potential value and possible widespread adoption.
I guess when employers start hooking up their applicant tracking systems to TiVo – unlikely I think – or Monster start squishing upstarts like vidolio and VidRez.com on their way to emulating YouTube, we will have already moved on to offshoring recruiting to some fantasy cyberland. Yeah, right…as if.
The early and growing success of recruitment videos that target a demographically exact audience – and there are many examples to pick from: try Google or Electronic Arts; the CIA; Comcast; GMAC; the LAPD; and even one-offs for specific jobs – does not necessarily mean video resumes will be as widely accepted by employers in return. After all, institutionalized HR and recruiting are not always as net-savvy as the under 30-something crowd.
Anyway, that’s my take. What do you think?
Brave New Recruiting Metrics: Do They Figure?
- Author: Amitai Givertz
- Posted: February 21, 2007
- Category: Talent Management
- Tags: Metrics, Performance Staffing
- Comments: 4
Dave Lefkow posts an interesting article on ERE, Proactive Recruiting Metrics. Dave observes that there is a basic shift going on inside organizations worldwide; employers that are moving away from requisition-driven models to a proactive model for recruiting.
In line with this realignment comes a different emphasis on which metrics matter most. Traditional measures like time-to-fill and cost-per-hire — key benchmarks in a reactive setting — are becoming less important in the context of the new recruiting model that Dave describes. Here, new performance measures reminiscent of a sales operation become the norm: number of inbound enquiries received, contacts made, candidates engaged and so on.
While Dave makes a reasoned case — and we like it — I still wonder if he is not ahead of his time, as visionaries often are.
Dave describes an approach that — from want I can tell — would most appropriately fit the proactive recruiting model that has been envisioned variously as Just-in-Time Recruiting (JIT), Lean Staffing, or Total Quality Management (TQM). Hardly understood by the majority who would be charged with its execution, this approach to re-engineering the talent funnel assumes that some very basic changes — not to be confused with easy — have already taken place. Unfortunately, in my travels I do not see much wholesale, elemental change going on, at least on a scale that makes Dave’s argument relevant in the vast majority of U.S. staffing environments.
As long as most organizations view recruiting as an expense not an investment and/or a transaction-driven process, not a strategic business orientation, then time-to-fill and cost-per-hire metrics will remain both easier to quantify, digest and rationalize. Similarly, as HR and recruiting continue to grapple with their strategic roles and relationships, I believe the changes Dave calls for will be slow in coming.
I also wonder if the brave new metrics Dave references were available…
- Candidate identified
- Unknown level of interest/have not contacted
- Connection established
- Not interested
- Contacted
- Willing to listen to opportunities
- Willing to refer others
- Interested in opportunities
- Passed on to hiring team
- In the hiring cycle for a specific opportunity
- Hired
- Rejected (would hire in future)
- Rejected (do not hire)
- Declined
…how many employers would be enabled with the corporate leadership, mindset and analytics to use it effectively, at all? I guess we wait for wholesale changes on these fronts too.
That is not to suggest that employers should ignore the business case for improving their recruitment processes and metrics, or take immediate steps to get there. Nor is it to suggest front-runners have not emerged, implementing the infrastructure for a new model. But we should not overlook the monumental task that this transition from reactive to proactive recruiting represents in reality. Nor should we underestimate the time it will take to get there.
Dave’s earlier post Do recruiters really need CRM? makes for an equally interesting, related read. If people want the kind of recruiting metrics he references in his ERE article — basically, conversion rates, not the usual metrics-data produced by applicant tracking systems (ATS) — the answer to that question is, “Yes, indeed, recruiters do need CRM.” Perhaps we should also ask, “But when and how?”
The Blog Carnival on Employer Branding
- Author: Amitai Givertz
- Posted: February 20, 2007
- Category: Recruitment Communications, Employment Branding, Blogging
- Tags: Blogs, Employment Branding, Management, Recruitment Communications
- Comments: 0
If you find yourself with some time on your hands, lonely perhaps, try a night out at The Blog Carnival on Employer Branding. There is a lot to see and plenty to think about, even if some of the submissions there are a little off topic.
This week David Maister, who writes the Passion, People and Principles blog – one of my favorites – is going for the “everyone’s a winner” play with three wild shots. Unfortunately, his aim is a little off with only one post hitting the mark:
- Stylists (Staff Turnover and Customer Retention) asks, “Who really “owns” your customers? Is your brand strong enough to withstand employee turnover?” A hit, but only just.
- Lessons from a Natural Manager - new careers podcast episode discusses Jerry Labbate’s intuitive management style and covers his strategies for hiring the “right” people, and then keeping them engaged and performing.” Great stuff but, sorry, it misses.
- What Managers Do Least Well states, “Managers that fail to address their underperformers risk losing their top performers over it.” Hmmm. Great read, but a miss.
Stay posted, the carnival is ongoing. Enjoy the ride.
ATS Sourcing Data: Can You Trust It?
- Author: Amitai Givertz
- Posted: February 19, 2007
- Category: Tools and Resources
- Tags: No Tags
- Comments: 0
Jake Firth, CTO and co-founder of AllRetailJobs.com, recently published an industry white paper suggesting that candidates incorrectly identified the source of hire when clicking on applicant tracking systems (ATS) — almost all of the time! When you consider that critical decisions like recruitment advertising planning and budgeting are driven by source of hire metrics, such misleading data could have a potentially devastating affect, no?
Suppressing the cynic inside, speculating why this research is being provided by a job board, one has to ask: “Okay, so who’s going to fix the problem?” The job boards, an ATS vendor, perhaps? It seems that nothing much has happened since GO Jobs – a job distribution service – suggested a Source of Hire Protocol, and wasn’t the HR-XML Consortium supposed to be doing something spiffy? It’s all very confusing.
Anyway, you can read Jake’s white paper — ATS Sourcing Data – 83% Inaccurate — and draw your own conclusions. It’s an easy read, if hard to digest.
You might find this related reading helpful too:
- Surveys Don’t Work: John Sumser’s summary of Jake’s paper on Electronic Recruiting News
- Source of Employment: A Riddle for Recruiters, by Peter Weddle on CareerJournal.com
- Keeping Tabs on Productivity of Recruiting Tools, by Eilene Zimmerman writing on Workforce.com
- Where Do Candidates Come From?, by Jason Whitman on Recruitment Technology: Beyond the ATS
- Getting Source Tracking Right, by Colin Kingsbury on the HRMDirect Blog
- GO Jobs Enables Source of Hire Recruitment Tracking With New Open Standard, found at OnRec
- Metrics for Executives, by Randall Birkwood found on ERE
If you are an employer — with or without an ATS — I would be interested to hear if you have ever had problems with the collection/accuracy of your source of hire data, what you might have done about it and if that worked for you.
Recruiter, Flat World Thinking
- Author: Amitai Givertz
- Posted: February 15, 2007
- Category: That's Life, Business Matters
- Tags: No Tags
- Comments: 0
I was introduced to the concept of flat world thinking in1984 by Lou Tice in a basement flat off the Harrow Road. My friends had acquired a bootlegged copy of his personal/professional development and motivational program: New Age Thinking for Achieving Your Potential.
We watched Lou present his stuff on video, listened to him on tapes and read about his theories on what is now a very tatty Xeroxed manual. At the time, empowered by what I had learned, I gave up smoking and visualized my way into a new job. Cool, huh? Today, I still draw on some of those concepts; they seem to have as much relevance to me now as they did back then.
Concepts like this one…
Flat world thinking describes the type of thinking that is grounded in conventional wisdom and knowledge which, in and of itself, limits the possibilities of a thing and inhibits its potential. It explains the type of cultural trance – a condition that exists when a whole group believes something – that caused Christopher Columbus so many problems with would-be sponsors and crew. Normally, everyone would have been onboard with an adventure sailing around the world on a horizontal plane – how else could it be done – but circumnavigating a globe, what madness!
Similarly, flat world thinking describes those places where “it is what it is” has become a mantra of resignation, a place where the possibilities of creativity, innovation, pushing the envelope and all that good stuff gets stifled in principle and process, procedure and protocol.
In recruiting, flat world thinking describes the kind of things that are accepted as true, even when those “truths” may have been proven to be based on erroneous assumptions. Flat world thinkers might say:
- The CEO won’t buy that
- It won’t work here, no way
- We’ve already budgeted for…
- That will take too long and cost too much
- We only advertise in the newspapers/online
- Hiring managers just don’t get it
- No one wants to relocate here
- We tried that before and it didn’t work
- Turnover is an industry-wide problem; we live with it
- IT manages this and Marketing manages that
- Forever-open reqs. come with the territory
- We can’t compete for talent on what we pay
- Our cost-per-hire and time-to-fill are as good as they’ll get
…and close their minds to the possibility that their world is round, not flat after all.
Today, I dare you to catch yourself thinking thoughts or doing things that put barriers between you and the possibility of achieving something extraordinary. Test your assumptions. Challenge your peers. Press your management.
As staffing systems, recruiting technology and talent management become more complicated and the need to implement greater efficiencies more pressing, surely one of the ways to prosper is to find new ways to think about the world in which we operate. And wouldn’t that be a source of competitive advantage too; even the basis for your own personal and professional development?
Managing change is rarely easy. It seems to me that we run into flat world thinking most often when we are ready to make things happen but those around us – sponsors or crew may be – are not. If you find yourself looking for some free, no strings attached counsel on how you might rise above the fog when others are telling you to get your head out of the clouds, please contact me. If I can’t help you, I’ll help you find someone who can. That’s a promise.
OFCCP Compliance, Record Keeping: You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet
- Author: Amitai Givertz
- Posted: February 13, 2007
- Category: Business Matters
- Tags: OFCCP Compliance, Tools and Resources
- Comments: 1
I liked seeing last year’s OFCCP new rulings on the Definition of an Internet Applicant described as The Recruiting Industry’s version of Y2K. I think that fits. Of course, one of the issues at hand is the voluminous record keeping that is required to show compliance and everything that goes along with it.
On the other hand, and affecting every employer, not just federal contractors, is the issue of archiving emails. Now, that’s a doozy. E-Mail Retention: The High Cost of Digging Up Data found on Baseline is a must read, especially for your CTO:
When encountering legal or regulatory action, technology managers who fail to get corporate data fast or vouch for its completeness can cost their companies millions of dollars. Learn what happened to WestLB, an investment bank, when it had to exhume 650,000 e-mail messages and documents after it was hit with a sex discrimination lawsuit.
The article also mentions a sex discrimination case against UBS Warburg. A U.S. District Court judge in New York found that, as the company couldn’t produce backup tapes for deleted mail, the jury could “infer that the [missing] evidence would have been unfavorable to UBS.” Laura Zubulake was awarded $29.3 million in this landmark case. Although UBS Warburg denied discriminating against her and said it would appeal, the bank settled the case for an undisclosed sum.
So the question is: “Do emails and the like fall under the record keeping guidelines for OFCCP compliance?” Well, yes, along with resume databases, job banks, electronic scanning technology, applicant tracking systems, applicant service providers, applicant screeners and what-have-you. But E-Mail Retention: The High Cost of Digging Up Data suggests there are compelling reasons to make sure your postmaster doesn’t fall asleep at the wheel, whether you are a federal contractor or not.
If you would like to know how RCI’s OFCCP Compliance Audits can help you make sure you have your bases covered, send me an email, and I’ll put you in touch with an expert. Otherwise, you might find The Information Governance Engagement Area a useful resource. They publish a Compliance Pipeline. Let me know what you think.
Stop Demotivating Your Employees!
- Author: Amitai Givertz
- Posted: February 8, 2007
- Category: Employee Retention
- Tags: No Tags
- Comments: 1
I came across a Harvard Management Update entitled Stop Demotivating Your Employees!
The authors (David Sirota, Louis Mischkind and Michael Meltzer) claim that most employers have things backwards. Rather than worry about motivating their employees, they should stop their managers from demoralizing them.
Surveys of approximately 1.2 million employees at 52 companies — primarily Fortune 1000 firms — reveal that in about 85% of firms, employee morale drops sharply after the first six months of employment and continues downward from then on.
And much of the problem lies with the way managers handle personal relationships, processes and procedures. Does this ring true for you? If you’re looking for the latest best practices and expert opinion in all areas of the staffing function you might find our white papers helpful. Let me know what you think.
