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Invested, innovative, brilliant: Improving the recruiting experience |
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Monday April 28th, 2008 Why title an entry with lyrics from the Spice Girls? As the first month of writing for this blog comes to a close, it's time to find out what you've enjoyed and what you want to see more of. I really, really, really want to know.
Friday April 25th, 2008 No one knows everything. Expertise takes a long time to develop and, according to its nature, is limited to a single topic or sub-topic. Recruiters are experts in recruiting and hiring the best people for available positions. RPO, or, Recruitment Process Outsourcing is all about enabling managers and other professionals to get on with their area of expertise while we, as recruiters, get on with ours. It's the outsourcing of the entire recruitment and hiring process to a third party. And yet, even though it frees them up to focus on productivity, many companies are reluctant to embrace RPO. They may not understand where the process comes from, or how it works. To ease this misunderstanding, here is an RPO primer with links to all the basic info about RPO: What? RPO is different than other forms of HR outsourcing because the third-party takes ownership of the process completely independently. Wikipedia has a great overview on this topic. Where? RPO has been used, up until now, by larger enterprizes with global operations. Innovative HR firms, though, are adapting RPO to help medium-size and smaller companies get used to the concept and prove that it can work to their advantage. Why? The cost of recruiting quality staff has remained static for the past decade. RPO enables companies to reduce recruitment costs, shorten the time to hire, and to reduce the time commitment required from executives and managers in the hiring process. When? RPO is part of a natural evolution of third-party HR consulting and business services that started in the 1970s. The time to start educating people about RPO and how it works is now! How? RPO is all about capability and capacity. Companies have to recognise where the capability of their HR firm rests. Every aspect of the process, from advertising to screening and from interviewing to onboarding and orientation. The third party can then dedicate their capabilities to their clients' needs at full capacity. RPO allows the people with the expertise in people, third party HR consultants, to do what they do best while corporate managers can focus on what they do best: managing a productive and successful company. Obviously, building an atmosphere of trust and familiarity is key to forming a succesful relationship with any client. Those are the relationships where RPO can reap the most benefits for everyone.
Tuesday April 22nd, 2008 A couple of people have recently sent me op-ed and commentary pieces on the research Forrester recently released about the 4 'I's of engagement, which are: Involvement Interaction Intimacy Influence And I can't help thinking: Where the heck have recruiters been for the past 8+ years, that they think these 4 I's are somehow breaking news? If you have been on the front lines with candidates - especially those under 30 - for the past few years, you should be extremely familiar with these concepts, and you should already have adapted to them. (Regardless of what Forrester has to say on the subject, marketers have been well aware of these 4 I's since the late 1990s - they really aren't new concepts.) For those of you for whom these ideas come as a revelation, I advise a trip to Cluetrain: http://www.cluetrain.com .
Tuesday April 22nd, 2008
The best way to talk about the relationship recruiters, employers and candidates share is this: We all have a vision of the workplace that will never been seen in an Dilbert comic strip. Wednesday April 16th, 2008 Achieving a major life goal is one of the most satisfying things to experience. The preparation, the staging, the actualization and the results of achievement are all parts of a process most of the business community has embraced. When you meet someone who has achieved some worthy goals, it is natural to admire their single-mindedness, their determination, and their discipline. But, are they necessarily good team players who can thrive in a collaborative atmosphere and work toward group consensus? Everyone knows the SMART system for personal goal setting advocated by Mind Tools and other professional performance consultants:
Fewer of us, though, may be familiar with how to apply these processes to collaborative or collective goal-setting. These goals have to motivate employees and managers alike, and generate greater productivity, better communication and higher morale across the board. It's often said that "the future belongs to those who collaborate." Are candidates who can achieve their personal goals a natural fits for environments where team goals are set and achieved collaboratively? Or, are there other character and personality traits that we should be looking for when sending candidates to interview for team-centric positions? Monday April 14th, 2008 Apparently, the first thing we need to prepare for the four-generation workplace, is a new vocabulary! People used to criticize "political correctness" as an insincere attempt at being inclusive. Critics said that attempts to ask people to change their language were just limiting freedom of expression. On the upside, I think people are more careful about what they say and how their comments reflect on their characters after the "political correctness" of the 1990s challenged people to think before they speak. It's hard to believe that, post-politcal correctness, in some work environments, older workers are still hearing comments like these: "the old woman" "that old goat" "too long on the job" "old and tired" "a sleepy kind of guy with no pizzazz" "an old fart" Or they hear how much more valuable younger workers are through comments like these: "We need young blood around here" "Let's make room for some MBAs" "Let's bring in the young guns." These are the comments age discrimination lawsuits are based on. The kind of cases that, in 2006 alone, cost US companies $51.5 million in damages plus legal expenses, says Bob McCann, an associate professor of management communication at the USC Marshall School of Business. More important than the money, McCann contends is the damage the ageist language causes. To companies, it has a negative impact on employee productivity and corporate profits. For individuals on the receiving end, exposure to ageist comments can cause everything from reduced life satisfaction to lowered self-esteem and depression. I am not sure that comments taken from law suit records proves that ageism is everywhere. Age is often part of the good-natured teasing that exists on lots of intergenerational workplace teams. Today, for example, I heard a story about the youngest member of an investment banking department who recently celebrated her birthday. After presenting her with a cupcake with one candle, her much older colleague asked, "Are you old enough to drive yet?" She was just thrilled with the entertaining old goat's teasing. So, as we prepare for the four-generation workplace, do we train people how to use their language? Do we teach them about social team dynamics? Or, do we talk about using sensitivity toward individuals wisely? Friday April 11th, 2008 Let's call it Post Transitional Moodiness or PMT for short. After a series of layoffs during a merger or an acquisition, most companies automatically refer employees who have lost their jobs to outplacement counselling and other programs. What they don't do is give psychological support to those who keep their jobs. In order for company transitions to be effective, companies have to embrace some contradictory moodiness. In the effort to become leaner, meaner, more efficient companies, firms also have to become a lot more sensitive, say two business experts. According to Mitchell Marks of San Francisco State University and Kenneth De Muese of Lominger International, employees are so stressed out and worried about what might come next in the months after a transition, that they spend valuable work time venting their emotions and that harms productivity. Sound far fetched? British research from 2005 found that 83% of mergers and acquisitions don't increase shareholder value. More than half, 53%, actually end up decreasing shareholder value. How do you prevent your company from being among the 53% of failed transitions? De Muese and Marks have some pretty interesting recommendations for HR professionals. Among the suggestions:
Marks and De Muese spoke yesterday at the annual conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP). Are any of you developing stress management programs for use during company transitions? Are they available to the employees that remain with the company or only to those going through separation? Saturday April 5th, 2008 Here are the most popular social networking sites, by total number of users as of December 2007. (This is US data, of course, but still an interesting guide.) Currently Top 10 Social Networking Sites
MySpace (2007) 60,104,000 (2006) 55,256,000 Facebook (2007) 22,574,000 (2006) 13,110,000 Classmates Online (2007) 10,748,000 (2006) 11,406,000 Windows Live Spaces (2007) 8,856,000 (2006) 8,703,000 AOL Hometown (2007) 6,853,000 (2006) 9,032,000 Club Penguin (2007) 6,358,000 (2006) 2,688,000 LinkedIn (2007) 4,804,000 (2006) 2,072,000 Reunion.com (2007) 4,090,000 (2006) 4,327,000 AOL Community (2007) 4,069,000 (2006) 5,213,000 Flixster (2007) 3,097,000 (2006) 744,000
Saturday April 5th, 2008 Last September, we posted a tongue-in-cheek, internal promo video on YouTube. It was produced for a corporate event we had in September 2007, so we didn't do a whole lot of external promotion - we really only posted it on YouTube because it seemed a shame not to share something that we liked so much and had so much fun doing. (You can see the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43dap5lqH3Y ) But in the past 7 days, something happened: traffic to the video increased by 18%. In the past 7 months, the video had had about 1000 views; in the past 7 days, we'd suddenly had about 200. At first we wondered what the heck had happened. And then we realized: 7 days ago, we'd posted a couple of job advertisements which were decidedly irreverent - instead of another boring list of skills and experience requirements, we'd asked for someone with the energy of a litre of Red Bull, the persistency of Jason Bourne, the popularity of Ellen Degeneres, and the brain of Jon Stewart. The job postings included a link to the video. (You can see one of the job postings here: http://www.head2head.jobs) For all the talk about how much 'good' job postings can increase the quality and quantity of applicants, many recruiters still shy away from this kind of job ad - they take longer to write, and seem somehow more 'risky'. There's no question that pop-culture references have to be used wisely - a job ad that references, say, Chris Crocker (the 'Leave Britney alone' guy) might be just a little too obscure for the average job-seeker - in order to avoid credibility problems. But a job ad that references someone like Jon Stewart is going to attract people who like Jon Stewart; and since his audience typically skews above-average in intelligence and education, it's a safe bet that you're going to end up with above-average candidates. Of course, the proof is in the hiring: Over the next few weeks, we'll look at the hires that were made as a result of these job ads.
Friday April 4th, 2008 Ever wondered just how far women have come in the work force? Linda Krefting, an associate professor at Rawls College of Business celebrated by putting numbers to the progress women have made in the workforce over the past forty years: "In the 1960s more than 90 percent of women in the workplace were working in a limited number of occupations, a 'women's ghetto' where most workers were women – light manufacturing, retail sales, clerical work, and health and education," Krefting says. Culturally, things certainly have changed. In the sixties, the idea that men and women held different kinds of jobs was so acceptable that there were separate sections of newspaper help employment ads. There was "help wanted—male" and "help wanted—female." The numbers, on the other hand, say we haven't come as far as we think. In the 1960s, only about 43 percent of women were in the labour force. Now about 60% are. The value of women's work, though, has gone up. Thirty years ago, women in the US earned about 60 percent of what men earned. They now earn about 81%. Women with a high school education make $26,000 per year while men make about $10,000 per year more. With a university degree, women make an average of $42,000. Men make $57,000. Equality between men and women has been reached in one way, but it's not a statistic that makes you want to break out the champaign: The unemployment rate for women in the 1960s was about 30 percent higher than it was for men. Today, unemployment rates for men and women are equal. Do you think these numbers represent profound change over the past forty years, or do the statistics only emphasize how much farther women have to go to achieve equality at work?
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About the Authors Paul Dodd
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Paul has one simple goal: To help companies hire great people - and get the most out of every recruiting dollar they spend. That's why he's recognized as one of the best recruitment-industry thinkers in Canada.