Three Types of Rest Stops to Consider Along Your Talent Network System

By Kevin W. Grossman

The U.S. Interstate Highway System construction was authorized in 1956 by the Federal Aid Highway Act. Over 55 years later its network extends nearly 50,000 miles of highway and about one-quarter of all vehicle miles driven in the country use this system. Add to that thousands and thousands of miles of other byways and bad roads and you’ve got a lot of driving going on.

Along the way there are a myriad of rest stops, fast food restaurants, gas stations, hotels and motels, run of the mill and eclectic points of interest – you name it. Along most major thoroughfares you’ll find plenty of places to stop and “refuel,” but there are times where there’s a whole bunch of nothing and you better be sure you’ve got enough fuel in “all tanks.” Add to that extreme hot and cold weather, accidents and commute gridlock and you’re along for one helluva ride.

I took a road trip this week to see my best friend in Chico, CA. I know the route well, as a collective group of friends and I from high school have made the journey every year since my friend moved here in 1989. Not so much in the past few years with all of us getting older and life getting more complicated, which is why my trip was overdue.

The highways and byways are a means to an end; we’re not driving them for the journey, just the destination. Most of the time at least, unless it’s a first-time vacation road trip experience – like your first true job hunt. Or even the next one, or the next one…

Like an Escher maze, the social networking pages to job boards to career sites to applicant tracking systems are as endless as the miles and mils of roads we travel everyday. Most career search drivers just want to get on and off, and yet we don’t really help them do that; we don’t provide them with a Zen-like GPS so they can get to where they’re going to and apply for that dream job. You know, the one advertised on the big, religiously gaudy billboards along the highway – “Jesus is really sorry about the candidate experience. Have some fries and a Coke. Or a Pepsi.”

I recommend that employers really think about the experiences they’re creating for job candidates, that they should travel the same roads themselves to experience them first hand.

Did you get lost? Get a flat tire? Engine catch fire? Stuck in gridlock? Did you get a ticket? Did you get flipped off by someone you cut off? Did you flip someone off who cut you off? Did you find a rest stop along the way? Did you ever get to where you’re going to?

Once you’ve done that, then consider these three types of rest stops along your talent network systems:

1. You don’t need rainbows and unicorns along the side of the road while they apply, but you do need to give those candidates wanting to apply easily and efficiently the courtesy of the path of least resistance. Reduce the number of clicks; these folks just want to apply for your jobs. Don’t make them do road work along the way. 
2. But oh, do have periodic rest stops for those who need to pause for whatever reason – and give them glimpses of your company culture in between. Meaning, if I apply and then take a break before I complete an online assessment, keep selling me as to why I want you to apply in the first place and why you should be working here. Give me a reason to come back and finish, entice me, don’t make it a chore just because I have to stop and go pee. 
3. And lastly, for the smaller percentage of candidates who want to take more time to get to know you and others, both outside your company and your current employees, give them fun-land rest stops complete with collaborative refueling stations, gaming options, testing centers, white boards to share insights, virtual face-time communications across networks and whatever else you can think of to have them get to know you and vice-versa. Give them the opportunity to shine when they want to make the time and stop.

That is all. Happy driving!

Catching talent! We should expect more of portable and flexible in the world of work

By Kevin W. Grossman

That’s why I downloaded it. So at some point I could join a online meeting or webinar remotely, from the comfort of my own iPad.  

And that’s all I wanted to do the first morning of the Recruiting Innovation Summit this week, to join and run an important online meeting from the comfort of an armchair in a hallway adjacent to the event. This is a popular virtual meeting product that I assumed wouldn’t have failed – but it did. I tried five times to join that friggin’ meeting, and each time it failed.

I’ve seen a lot of apps – both native and browser-based – and I’m still amazed at the seemingly lack of effective user interface (UI) testing. I’m sure you’ve heard various iterations on the phrase, “If you don’t use it, you’re gonna lose it.” And if your users don’t use it…well?

To be fair, lots of technology companies, including those in HR and recruiting, have some level of UI proficiency on their product development teams. But again, all I wanted to do was join and run a virtual meeting, and I couldn’t.

Just as busy, progressive professionals want to take their online profiles with them wherever they go, the same folk want to (and do) take their virtual offices with them wherever they go – that’s the kind of world we live in now. It’s an evolution of sorts, the world of work pushing us to be “on” at any time, dialing it up and down as needed, and us pushing back, dialing it up and down as needed. This includes seeking out and exploring new job opportunities.

A growing contingent of professionals expect portable, expect flexible, expect a more diverse world of “easy buttons” that actually work. Here’s a juxtaposition though – when asked at the summit whether or not the attendees have a mobile-optimized career site, only about 2 of 200 raised their hands. 

Make it easy for talent to signup at talent fairs using Talent Catch!

Add to that the fact that according to Gerry Crispin and the Candidate Experience Awards research, only a little over 50 percent of companies have applied for their own jobs online.

What if I wanted to hit a hallway adjacent to an event I was attending and have a quick interview with a recruiter? Or even just simply finishing applying for a new role via a social referral I received? Or join a talent network via simply clicking on “Connect with Facebook” or “Connect with LinkedIn”?

What if indeed. We’ve only just begun.

Seeding Career Clubs in Talent Network Coffee Shops

By Kevin W. Grossman

I don’t even like coffee, but I will drink a chai latte or a fruit smoothie when frequenting a coffee shop for business or pleasure. Don’t judge; I’m sure I’m not the only one who doesn’t like coffee.

But that’s just a means to an end reason to frequent those establishments in the first place. The real reasons we go are to work, read, relax or meet like-minded people to discuss life, love and industry. Intimate, small groups that prefer face time and who might even start a career club of sorts at their favorite coffee shop to mentor one another about the world of work.

Brain freeze from the fruit smoothie I just downed – I read an article the other day titled Our Most Effective Source of Hire, and in it the author had conducted a quality-of-hire analysis in his company based on the following:

Quality of hire is defined as the percent of new hires who pass their one-year anniversary and score at least “meets expectations” on their first review. For example, we grouped together all the new hires from the first quarter of 2010. We then ran a report dating to the last day of the quarter a year later, 2011. We determined what percent of those hires were still employed and were not on performance improvement plans, etc. We did this on a quarterly basis.

What they found were the top 6 quality-of-hire rankings:

1. Former employees
2. Passive candidates
3. Employee referrals
4. Staffing agency hires
5. Contractor conversions
6. Job boards 

What’s interesting is that there was a 10% variance between staffing agencies and former employees, but a 20%-25% variance between contractor conversions and job boards and the top ranking of former employees. Not too surprising for those who’ve been in the hiring game for any length of time.

This also aligns nicely with where the value of talent networks come in – a place where former employees, passive candidates and employee referrals can come together, share a latte or an espresso (or a fruit smoothie) and talk career shop and find employment.

However, these networks just don’t happen. Someone’s got to take the lead and launch something somewhere in order to attract like-minded others for like-minded activities to then nurture this new type of network. Call it manufactured organic; you’ve got to seed it to breed it. Networks have formed since the beginning of time and there’s always someone or some entity forming them, leading them and nurturing them.

Ah, but what’s in a name? Naming and labeling have always changed the perception of what something is and the why of it. If we called it a “career club,” then that could imply a non-threatening collective of people helping people find, land and retain employment, as well as adapting and advancing. If we called it the “working for the man club,” that would change the perception even further — but it would still a self-contained and self-promoted ecosystem of people seeking and giving career advice (or venting about their crappy jobs and bosses).

If we called it a talent community, however, then the “talent” in talent community would actually dilute community, because it would be labeling its participants in a way that most wouldn’t label themselves as. “Community” itself can also be misleading as being to “touchy-feely,” incorporating group hugs, rainbows and unicorns. Plus, talent is for Hollywood, right? Not for us working stiffs. That’s why for those of us who created this career club, I bet we would never call it a talent community.

In fact, I bet most who join an in-person or online “community” primarily want to socialize, but only a few would join talent communities to do the same. Most of those people only want a job, pure and simple. And that’s okay, because that’s why we’ve been seeding and growing talent networks for decades.

But again, there would be a minority who would want to collaborate and commiserate with the like-minded about life, love and industry. A minority that includes former employees, passive candidates and employee referrals, and those are the folks your company wants to source and hire.

I say seed the career clubs inside talent network coffee shops. Just make sure to serve smoothies. Mixed berry with banana preferably.

Recruiting, Retention and Playing in the Rain

By Kevin W. Grossman

A few raindrops we ignore. They’re an annoyance, an inconvenience, and we wipe them away with our hands as we hustle through our busy days.

But as the heavens open up and the deluge begins, we become soaked to the bone or we run for cover quickly. Either way the water pools in front of us and we have a choice: rush inside and dry off, watch from under an awning, or we splash through the rushing water together, milk carton boats in hand.

That’s what it’s like with marketing – we want to seep into the mindset of our buyers, and with recruiting that means seeping (and soaking) into the mindset of job applicants. Attracting talented folk to our organizations is an art more than a science – we start with a lot of rain, a funnel and see what squirts out the tiny end.

Then what? The part that’s missing is the middle ground, the engagement, the playing in the rain together before we source and recruit. We hire and we pray (and work hard) for the right fit and employee longevity.

Some voluntary turnover is normal and churn happens, but according to Bersin & Associates, the average cost per hire for all U.S. companies is around $3,500, which can add up. (And for those keeping score at home, this month the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) approved the first American National HR Standard addressing cost-per-hire, the first HR standard developed solely through the sponsorship of the SHRM.)

Whatever your costs are and how they compare compare to other companies, the higher the voluntary turnover rate is for new hires in year one, the more dramatic the cost per hire numbers can become.

That’s a storm no talent acquisition leader or CFO wants to face. And yet, marketing and recruiting don’t play nice together with retaining candidates long term; they don’t run out in the rain to race to the street river, milk carton boats in hand, solidifying the relationship before the hires are made and after.

A recent article by Dr. John Sullivan titled Do You Need a World Class Retention Program? A Checklist of What It Takes, Dr. Sullivan shares “the most thorough and comprehensive checklist on retention that you will ever see.” I highly recommend it. Surprisingly though, there was really no reference to recruiting as retention partner, and there were only three references to CFO’s playing a role in number-crunching the cost of hiring, turnover and retention.

Let’s go back to marketing rain. Marketing brings in new leads that are generated are then passed over to sales to follow up on and eventually close. Some of them at least. Those in the lead pipeline may be nurtured and marketed to so as to inch them along to close.

Then what? Those that do close become customers and are handed over to account management and customer service folk and then – a year later when it’s time to retain their business and a percentage say thanks but no thanks. “Just wasn’t the right for us.”

User adoption correlates tightly with customer retention, and yet, marketing gets them to the door and sales closes it, then marketing and sales sit on the porch and have a few beers, watching the rain and the employment branding and job applicant kids out playing in it. You’d think that an integrated marketing strategy includes a retention investment, but it’s not.

Same with recruiting talent, regardless if we’re talking contingent, retainer, corporate, RPO — but the argument is that, after the final candidates are presented, even closed, “management” leadership takes over and whatever happens 3, 6, 12 months down the road, isn't recruiting’s problem.

But I’d argue that insightful leaders understand that reducing turnover, increasing team retention and improving overall quality of fit with workplace culture are huge initiatives in an ever-changing and highly competitive social talent economy. That means everybody pre- and post-onboarding on your team plays a role in “user adoption.”

Recruiting is marketing and sales. Marketing and sales should be customer service, but it’s not. Marketing and sales should be partners in retention. The milk carton boats must be made, together.

So make it rain and let’s play.

Career sites will be windows of the marketing and sales soul

By Kevin W. Grossman

And there were those who said the internet would kill business (then with a capital “I”). Crazy, don’t you think? We certainly know better now.

I worked in Silicon Valley in the late 1990s where companies scrambled over another like ants to sugar to get a website up, any website up, in order to have a website up. Fast forward to today and we’ve learned a lot about search engine optimization (SEO), lead capture, call-to-action and the fact that according a recent The Economist article there are 4.6 billion mobile-phone subscriptions worldwide (though many people have more than one, so the world’s 6.8 billion people are not quite as well supplied as these figures suggest), and 1 billion-2 billion people use the internet.

One to two billion people use the internet. Research survey after research survey validates that the first place more and more of the growing internet user world goes in online, so it makes sense that the primary business website (and mobile-friendly website) are the eyes to the window of the marketing and sales soul.

Consumer product companies get that and B2B companies are getting it. But what is still lagging is the parallel (and the parable) of the company career sites, portals, pages, whatever you want to call them.

We treat (we can only hope) our prospects and customers like kings and queens because they’re the livelihood of our businesses. However, so are our employees and managers, because they’re the ones who make and deliver the things that are the livelihood of our businesses.

Just as we profile our customers we profile our candidates (or should be), but unlike our core buyers, we should give our future employees the opportunity to profile themselves, to create a “universal profile” that’s portable and includes a 360-view of all interests and skills and experience, housed anywhere they want – LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, other networks – to then be able to move among the online crowd whether they apply for a job or not. Yet.

Granted, talent acquisition technologies including applicant tracking systems (ATS) have been slow to adapt to the online profile – there’s still the “click here” to upload your resume. That’s changing for the better as the candidate experience improves allowing for easy integration of the online profile to the employer of choice, not to mention the benefits of a search optimized professional profile. Kind of like the way we’ve moved into the product and service marketing realm.

And that means that the company career portals will continue to evolve as the final destination – all employment brand fodder and job opportunities will lead to them like sugar trails of Web lore.

Career sites will become windows of the marketing and sales soul. Amen.