HRMDirect President Colin Kingsbury writes on the latest in recruiting and technology.

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John Sumser's post on branding today makes a great point:

What makes Company X the employer of choice for Unix professionals is unlikely to be the dynamic that attracts candidates in accounting. A brand, as it is commonly understood is a good place to start. But, the focus on being a generic "employer of choice" is an inadequate vision for effective long term labor supply management.

A few days ago I came across the Microsoft video below (HT: Tales from the Digital Divide) which reminded me of why the term "branding" makes me feel like a steer about to be nailed with a red-hot iron.

Perfume and Diesel Fuel
To understand what's wrong with the conventional approach to branding, it's fun to look at old advertising posters and see what has and hasn't changed. A 30s cosmetic ad literally asks, "Who wants to look YOUNG?" Yesterday in the paper I saw an ad for something that I think was a skincare product, though it looked more like an industrial abrasive. Next to the jar was a grinning, Santa Claus-like face of Doctor Andrew Weil, saying, "When Matcha tea is prepared mindfully, it promotes an extraordinary sense of balance and well-being." I remembered it because the phrasing and presentation were so strikingly calculated to evoke a certain tone and sensitivity--think of how different it feels if you replace "mindfully" with "carefully" or "properly." This is about emotional manipulation, plain and simple.

The question branding today needs to face up to is whether it's selling a product or an idea of a product. As I mentioned in a previous post, my father worked in the fragrance industry, so I've been an observer of these things for a long time. When I was a kid, I remember my father being thoroughly amused when one of his fishing buddies asked him for some samples of a new men's cologne his company had just launched called Stetson Preferred Stock. This was the late 80s or so, and the venerable Stetson brand had become a little too red-state, so they came up with something a bit more urban in its sensitivity. The fishing buddy asking for the cologne, however, was a cowboy boot-wearing bulldozer operator, so my dad had to ask why he wanted that particular fragrance.

"Because something about it really covers the smell of diesel oil," he said matter-of-factly. Imagine that: perfume that makes you smell good.



The irony of course is that Microsoft, for its part, has some of the consistently worst branding out there. Seven years and a billion-ish dollars went into Windows Vista, and the slogan they come up with is "The Wow Starts Now?" I'd love to have seen the ideas they rejected. Then there's this. Of course, companies usually look like their leaders. In fact, Apple's branding has beaten Microsoft's silly for as long as anyone can remember, which happens to be the history of both companies.

And yet, what did it get them? A great brand does not equal a great strategy.

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permalink  |   ( 3 / 157 ) Just when you thought recruiting was safe again, along comes a new (potential) compliance mandate that promises to make the OFCCP rules look like child's play. Whatever your feelings on the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act now working its way through the wheels of Congress, the impact on employers could be dramatic.

I started paying close attention to the debate from the sidelines when the issue of increased standards for employer verification of new hires first entered the picture over a year ago. While it's too soon to know the precise shape the final law might take, Elaine Rigoli's ERE article makes the stakes clear:

The pending immigration legislation would do many things, including the hiring of thousands of additional border patrol agents; instituting the new "Z" worker visa; and adopting new deportation provisions.

Perhaps the most interesting element for the staffing world is Title III, which would create a mandatory employment eligibility verification system to electronically verify the eligibility of every worker in the country.

Title III touches on document verification requirements; records that must be kept by employers; protections against discrimination; ID theft prevention and privacy protections; information sharing; and other miscellaneous policies.

So, in other words, you'll need to keep complete records, but not too detailed, for long enough, but not too long, and you can't share them with anyone except the people who need them, etc. There, is everybody clear now?

Unlike the OFCCP, this law would cover all employers regardless of size, and if you've ever had a new hire walk away because your background check turned up a "red flag" due to a false match on a name or address, you know how any type of verification process can turn into a Kafkaesque nightmare. On the bright side, at least every employer will be in the same boat!

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permalink  |   ( 3 / 648 ) In a post today on RecruitingBloggers.com, the Recruiting Animal quotes the Brazen Careerist on the notion that "helicopter parents" are just doing what rich folk have always done to boost their kids' careers. Ryan Healy suggested that having parents pitch in during compensation negotiations was just like a performer or professional athlete being represented by an agent.

Ryan and Penelope are both full of interesting insights, but in this case I think they've got it wrong on both counts, and the differences illuminate why employers are correct to despise this new phenomenon.

Unlike a helicopter parent, a talent agent is representing not just a single individual, but themselves as owners of a brand and portfolio. Much like a recruiter, an agent has an interest in getting the best deal for his or her talent, but also in striking a fair deal for the employer. Over-inflation of skills and abilities or harsh negotiating tactics will exact a price on the agent's ability to do business with other clients in the future.

Likewise, when a wealthy individual pulls strings to get their kid a job, it's not a one-way transaction benefiting only the kid, but an act that maintains a potentially (or actually) lucrative business and social relationship. The wealthy parent is likely to be a source of capital or business connection at some point in the future, or may have been one in the past. Giving their son or daughter a job is in that sense an option premium or perhaps payment for a similar past favored rendered.

Of course, parents just want the best for their kids, and are likely to believe that they're just trying to get them a fair deal. But parents are hardly known for neutral advocacy, not in public anyway, and there's nothing wrong with that.

And lest it go unsaid, having Daddy get you a job is rarely looked on favorably by superiors, and will often earn the resentment of your peers even if you perform on par with everyone else. It's not for nothing that many self-made millionaires and billionaires have made their kids start out in the mail room and eat at least a little @#$! before inheriting the throne. So while you may be able to spin 'copter moms and dads as "no worse than what's always been done," promoting them as a positive fits the definition of chutzpah as "a kid who kills his parents and then begs the judge for leniency because he's an orphan."

All of this aside, hiring of entry-level employees is a lot more volatile with regards to economic conditions, and I suspect that a lot of the silliness we now see will evaporate like the morning fog with the next downturn in the economic cycle.

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permalink  |   ( 3 / 726 ) The Recruiting Animal continues his campaign against Myths of Generation Y over at RecruitingBloggers.com asking whether kids today aren't being raised too soft. The Animal cites a WSJ article which says that today's young workers need constant spoon-feeding of praise for even the smallest achievement lest they "fold up like a cell phone."

One of my more vivid memories growing up involves an annual father-son softball game my elemetary school held around this time of year. This school was definitely "Old School" in the sense that competition was encouraged and part of that was failure, which received as much public attention as success. Keeping in that spirit, the father-son softball game involved, you guessed it, the fathers versus the sons. Bear in mind that this place was grades 5-8, so the competition was hardly fair to begin with.

As I stood at bat, the pitcher lobbed me an absolute meatball right down the line. I am not going to be humble--I crushed that pitch like Alex Rodriguez and it went sailing off towards the trees at the end of the field. The crowd actually gasped in awe, and most of the fathers just stared up at it as it passed far overhead.

All Except one. Mine.

My father, no less a non-athlete than myself, went running off, faster than I've ever seen him run, before or since. As the ball falls back down from the stratosphere, he leaps--leaps, by God--and makes an over-the-shoulder-backwards catch of the sort that thirty years earlier would have gotten him signed to a double-A baseball team. The crowd, gasps in awe again, and then realizes that it wasn't just an impossible hit topped by an impossible catch, it was my dad who made the catch. Even the opposing team's coach slapped me on the back and says "that's the worst robbery I've ever seen."

To be fair, within about five seconds my dad looked like the cat who ate the canary. He'll never forget it, and I'll never forgive him for it, but what was he supposed to do, drop the ball?

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permalink  |   ( 3 / 567 ) Martin Snyder was nice enough to attempt to leave a comment on my previous post about the OFCCP, but for some reason my blog software is eating it, so I'm reposting it here for discussion. Martin writes,

Colin thanks for the review and I'm glad the post got your attention. Your prose is always worth the read whether I agree or not with whatever it is that you are saying.

Yes, I'm quite aware of what befalls Ahab, his ship, and crew. There is indeed a chance that I'll end up entangled on the body of the beast after leading our ship on a fruitless campaign- but somebody has to do it, and since I think we have standing and the least to lose of most who would cross the mighty hunter, it falls to me to voice the case against this governmental overreach.

Might I ask if you are aquatinted with Title IV of SOX, called "Enhanced Financial Disclosures"? or Title XI "Corporate Fraud and Accountability" ? The act is intended to provide better accounting systems- no comedy involved, and your notion about CFO's and their taste for the rule is likely bit obsolete. The Harvard Business Review published an article called "The Unexpected Benefits of Sarbanes-Oxley" noting that:

"The areas of improvement go well beyond technical statutory compliance. They include a strengthened control environment; more reliable documentation; increased audit committee involvement; better, less burdensome compliance with other statutory regimes; more standardized processes for IT and other functions; reduced complexity of organizational processes; better internal controls within partner companies; and more effective use of both automated and manual controls. The result is not only shareholder protection, the official purpose of the act, but also enhanced shareholder value..."

Do you really think anything similar will ever be said about the OFCCP rule, except by hopeful spinners with embedded interests in compliance regimes (especially complex, never-ending and subjective ones)?

Or do you imagine that any inane rule is a good thing, as long as it fosters "process", which apparently can only be a good thing?

To be honest I think there's more here agreeing with my points than not.

Martin may be correct in saying that my understanding of how CFOs and boards feel about SOX is obsolete. Since the law went into effect, there have been tweaks, but nothing wholesale--most of the changes have been in terms of how businesses understand and apply the law. So if CFOs feel different today than they did five years ago, that says more about the CFOs and boards than it does about the law.

Second, while I want to tread carefully lest I put words in Martin's mouth, he seems to continue to operate from the basis that the only goals served by the OFCCP rules are, well, the OFCCP. If you actually look at what the rule ends up requiring contractors to do, what emerges is that you basically need to be able to explain:

1. Who applied to each position
2. If that person met your minimum requirements
3. If so, what happened to them

Really, am I missing something huge here? The search audit requirements are a little kooky, but in practical application I've yet to hear any real horror stories about auditors going on fishing expeditions, least of all in smaller organizations.

In any case, none of these three things strike me as unreasonable questions for a manager to ask a recruiter. If you're unable to say, "here's everyone who applied for the req," then the OFCCP would seem to be the least of your problems. Circling back to the SOX example, are going to see recruiters in 4-5 years saying, "ya know, that OFCCP wasn't really *that bad* after all..." I think the answer is probably yes.

It is of course entirely possible to make the rules mean a lot more than that, and some companies choose for their own reasons to add eight bullets below each of the above items, while others take the opposite approach. We advise clients to follow the simplest approach that answers the necessary questions as they judge them, because the simplest approach is usually the most reliable. That said, if Martin wishes to excoriate vendors for catering to client whims, he's going to need a lot of harpoons.

Last, I can't shake this sense that Martin thinks that the OFCCP is tilting at non-existent windmills here in terms of systematic discrimination. I think it's understandable that we'd all like to say "yes, that's gone, don't happen 'round here no more," but as the years go by I become less convinced of my own former certainty. A good place to begin is this post at Assymetrical Information, which has some good comments with additional links. The statistics I've seen are neither good enough to prove the case beyond a shadow of a doubt, nor shoddy enough to be dismissed out of hand.

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