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

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We are exceptionally pleased to have David Perry of Perry-Martel as our Blogswap guest this week. David is a true innovator in the field and has literally written the book on aggressive career development tactics for job hunters. What we love about David is his refusal to accept excuses for the pursuit of mediocrity that characterizes much of recruiting, and his post is true to form.

Leadership Equity by David Perry
They used to say there were just two types of people in the old west – the Quick and the Dead. The Quick knew that it came down to not only talent and ideas, but execution. The Dead thought only talent mattered --- with predictable results.

Increasing the value your company is not just about “collecting talented people.” It’s about aligning your people with the company’s overall strategy, getting them to buy-in and to commit to a common vision. More importantly, you need to compel them to work towards the idea not because you told them – but because you gave them impassioned reasons to do it. Only then will employees take responsibility for how their actions affect the business.

Companies today, more than ever need leaders capable of managing a diverse community of people with a common mission who are willing to routinely operate at levels of peak performance. That’s how organizations compete in a knowledge based economy as centres of excellence – without leaving dead bodies at every gun fight. That's how you build Leadership Equity.

Is your company geared to go for the gold?

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permalink  |   ( 2.9 / 673 ) Shally Steckerl's blog post on SMS recruiting at ERE made me think about CBS's plan to advertise on eggs this coming fall. CBS knows full well that their advertising will be perceived as both intrusive and in-your-face. Odds are there will be protests at CBS headquarters and affiliates around the country involving groups of people pelting the buildings (and quite possibly network employees) with the CBS-branded eggs. And CBS knows these events will be covered by ABC, NBC, and the local newspaper. It's a classic case of, "I don't care what they write about me so long as they spell my name right."

Shally's post is less of a gift to bored headline writers, but it prompts many of the same questions. In these cases discussion often becomes segmented, like the old sitcom convention, into the angel and the devil that pop up on opposing shoulders. One says we can't do anything that might ever offend anyone, not even once, because that might tarnish our reputation. The other says, "if it feels good, do it!" Shally is happy to be pictured with horns sprouting from his forehead and his point that this technique is being used by NCAA coaches is apposite.

No one is debating whether intrusive marketing is intrusive. The more important question is whether it is effective. CBS will have its name cursed millions of times in America's kitchens this fall. People will debate at length whether anything is sacred anymore, but in the end, the product CBS is selling is scarce: if you like The Amazing Race, you have no choice but to watch it on CBS. At that point the question becomes whether the eggs offend you more than the show entertains you.

With SMS and recruiting, the balance is slightly different. At the early stage of the process, recruiters' solicitations are generally not worth very much: it's just an invitation to a conversation about a job you may not want and probably won't get. So the cost to blackballing that pushy recruiter seems very small, while the satisfaction of showing him who's boss is significant. So I think in this situation the intrusive approach has a real risk of alienating candidates.

But there is a way around this. If your communication offers a product of real value, whether it's a free Starbucks coffee or a guaranteed interview, you will get brushed off less. More importantly, you are going to need to learn how to do this sooner or later because within a year or two, every other recruiter in town will be SMS-spamming candidates. It's like telephone cold-calling: the first guy who did it might not have been objectively good at it, but he probably got great results because no one expected it. Poorly-executed SMS will deliver results today because it is novel, but it likely won't be for long.

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permalink  |   ( 2.9 / 473 ) Claudi Faust runs a great blog dedicated to helping companies improve their hiring experience for candidates. My contribution to this week's Recruiting.com Blogswap talks about how one of our clients, a company of under 200 employees, manages to create a compelling identity and experience without six-figure budgets or Madison Avenue ad agencies.

I think this is one of those subjects that really distinguishes people who "get it" from those who don't. Talk to many line managers, and you will hear them say, "Hiring experience? The bums should be happy we're interviewing them!"

Back in 2001-2004 you could get away with this sort of thing because there was some truth in the statement. For a manager who got his or ehr current job back then, there can easily be some resentment toward candidates who have it much better. This is human, but as a recruiter, the response needs to be simple and clear: Get over it! Times change, and companies need to treat their candidates at least as well as they treat their customers.

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permalink  |   ( 2.9 / 445 ) For this week's Recruiting.com Blogswap I am pleased to introduce you to Tod Hilton, a developer at Microsoft. Tod says he's neither a recruiter or hiring manager, but that's beside the point because recruiting is the one function in a company in which every person can play an important role. So without further ado, here's Tod:

I was reviewing Colin’s previous posts while preparing to write this one. I have to say that he has some interesting opinions and I enjoyed what I read, but this post in particular, Put Your Kids to Work Day, really rung true for me.

A little history for ya… I grew up in a solid middle class family and we never went without. I was an only child until I turned 11 which means that I got pretty much anything I wanted, within reason of course [no ponies in the backyard for me :-)]. Although they made a good living, my parents still recognized the value of teaching me about responsibility and hard work. I always had chores. I was washing dishes from the time I was old enough to reach the sink, mowing the yard since I was old enough to use the mower, feeding the dogs, cleaning my room, etc. I was lucky enough to receive an allowance when I was younger, but regardless of the money I was simply expected to contribute.

When I reached my teenage years I would spend the summers working for my dad in the furniture moving industry. Let me tell you, the guys and gals that lug furniture around for a living are tried and true blue collar Americans. Good, decent folks who work hard for 8-12 hours and then just want to relax and have a beer at the local pub afterward. During the school year I worked at a restaurant, Kroger’s grocery and a few other odd jobs for spending money and to pay for my truck. Shortly after graduating from high school and starting college, I decided to move out on my own which forced me to work full time while following the ‘7-year program’ versus the standard four. During those years I worked full time at Builder’s Square (a Home Depot knock-off owned by Kmart at the time), JC Penny and Guaranty Federal Bank (a Texas based bank).

Is there a point to this? Well, yes, there actually is. :-) Although I have a college degree and work for Microsoft now, my work experience from a young age is firmly based in the work-your-butt-off-for-low-wages blue collar world. I think there is a lot to be said for those experiences that carries forward and is applicable today…10, 15 and even 25 years later. Colin talks about how we’re training our children to “work smart,” but asks a valid follow-up question…are we also teaching them to “work hard?” With regard to the recruiting environment, he goes on to ask if recruiters are giving “real world” experience the weight it deserves?

That is an excellent question! One that I think more recruiters and interviewers should ask themselves before discounting someone without the industry-specific experience or education that we typically look for. I’ll use myself as an example here… I have a bachelors degree in Accounting, but I now work in the IT field. The fact that I have a degree at all holds weight with some managers, but others might immediately dismiss me because its not a Computer Science degree. Will future hiring managers penalize me because I don’t have a formal education in the C.S. field? Sure, that’s very possible, even likely with some managers. Here is my approach to that position as an interviewer, of course, I’m probably a bit biased. ;-) I don’t look at the area of focus as much as I look at the time they spent in college, did they graduate, talk with them about the college experience and what they gained from it. If they didn’t graduate then I’d ask them why. I know plenty of extremely successful people who never graduated from college...Bill Gates for instance. :-) Whether they graduated isn’t the important part of the puzzle, it’s what they learned during the experience.

Let’s put aside the topic of college and talk about real world experience now. Once again, I’ll use myself as an example. In March of 2005, I had accumulated five years of experience as a systems engineer with none as a developer. I had done some very basic development stuff in my spare time, but nothing even close to what would be required of a full-time developer. I went to my manager [and his manager] and told them I was seriously thinking about switching my career path towards development, but I honestly didn’t know where/how to get started as I had no practical experience. At that point my management made a decision that opened up a whole new world for me.

Based on my previous work ethic and performance as an SE, they gave me the opportunity to become a developer in our group and learn on the job. I had zero experience as a dev! Zero, zip, nada! My managers took a chance on me and bet that I would succeed as a developer based on my previous unrelated experience as an SE. Honestly, I don’t know many managers out there who would do that and I’m very thankful. So what does that have to do with recruiting? Well, I hope that recruiters/interviewers are taking a similar approach with applicants. Did that college applicant work at Home Depot throughout their college years? Don’t discount them because they didn’t work in the college’s computer lab…ask them about the experience and what they learned!

As recruiters and interviewers, I think it’s important for us to remember that all experience counts in life. Household chores as a kid, flipping burgers at McDonalds, cleaning office buildings or changing oil at Jiffy Lube…the work/life lessons to be learned in these jobs could be even more valuable than those from Huge Corporation, Inc.

~tod bio.todhilton.com


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permalink  |   ( 3 / 364 ) I have picked the occasional bone with John Sumser but as I hope I've made clear, I kid out of respect. Which is why I was flattered to receive this response to my recent critique of one of his daily articles. John says,

While that is very entertaining, the point we were making is that Jobby represents a generational difference, not an overnight sensation.

On that I could't agree more. Resumes are problematic to say the least, a "legacy format" if ever there was. But before we get too excited, it's worth considering this excerpt from the original article

The other day we visited a relatively new entrant to the recruiting software space. We tried to get them talking about Jobby. "Hmmm, this is very bad." They said. How do you control it? People could spam the system.

The more I think about this, the more I sympathize with the point of view given by the vendor.

The problem with resumes is that they are an unstructured document containing structured data. Unstructured data is the picture of a couple jogging on the front of the box of low-fat blueberry muffins. Structured data is the label on the back that tells you they replaced the fat with salt and sugar.

Tagging as implemented today is not that much different than the slogan on the front of the muffin box. They're keywords, with a little added salt and sugar. They are better in the one sense that you can search for ".NET programmer" and not have to worry about the hundred different ways those things might appear on a dead-tree resume. I like the way Jobby does search and refinement of results in terms of feel. Feel, as Steve Jobs has taught anyone who pays attention, is hugely important. But let's not get too distracted here. People long ago learned to "game" keywords to the point that they are remain useful only because there isn't anything much better at the moment.

The problem is in many ways precisely the one named by the anonymous vendor: spam. More precisely, it is the ability of the user to add unverified information to the system that defeats the purpose. The power of Wikipedia is not that anyone can write an article, but that anyone can edit it. For every person who wishes to inject junk, there is another who revels in flensing it out. This is the missing link in resumes, tagged or not.

Ultimately what we all want is honest information. The problem is that I don't see how we're going to get it. I've written before about how reputation systems play a critical role in the success of eBay. But eBay also has the benefit of running a dominant closed market where they can get away with forcing everyone to play the game their way. Recruiting currently enjoys nothing like this. Good people may set up profiles that expose them as they are, but mediocre or dishonest ones will probably not. No one with a brain will voluntarily air their dirty laundry. And various layers of government regulation (which are bound to get worse) will likely conspire against the more creative ideas that might force people to do so.

Perhaps pushing the good people up higher will be sufficient. But part of me thinks that would constitute a niche resource rather than a general solution.

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