Social Media Snafus of 2011: A Study in HR Best Practices

The blogosphere was happy to report some epic failures in large organizations’ use of social media in 2011. As I read through these lists (there were many), I thought, Wow, I’m glad I’m not managing HR there. You see, when something goes wrong in the office, HR inevitably gets called in for damage control. This applies when an organization’s use of social media goes wrong, too. Digging a little deeper into the top social media blunders, I realized that these mishaps offer some great insights into social media best practices.

As organizations begin crafting formal social medial policies, there are certain situations and mishaps for which they should be prepared. Here are the three snafus that stood out to me as having some serious lessons to learn from an HR perspective:

1. Communications Disconnect at Qantas. When launching a Twitter campaign in November, Qantas–the premiere airline in Australia–had a serious breakdown in communications. Amid widespread disruptions in service (the entire fleet had been grounded in October) they attempted to create some positive energy by asking followers to describe their “dream luxury in-flight experience” using the hashtag #QantasLuxury. The problem? The campaign launched the day after Qantas and its unions stopped contract talks. Customers hijacked the campaign’s untimely campaign and used the hashtag to voice serious complaints.

When managing your social media presence, these kinds of breakdowns in communication can have serious consequences. As such, establishing clear channels for disimmenating need-to-know information to key players in your management team is a must. Qantas’ mishap is a case in point on the importance of making it easy to quickly distribute key communications, not to mention the value in maintaining a degree of transparency in less-than-ideal times.

2. Kutcher’s Quickfire Backfire. As many organizations are learning, not everyone is equipped to keep small blunders from turning into social media firestorms–even if your “organization” is the brand behind a celebrity figure. There needs to be a process for managing your online presence. CBS’ new “Two and a Half Men” star, Ashton Kutcher, sent out a particularly nightmarish tweet to 8.5 million followers in November  which seemingly supported Joe Paterno: “How do you fire Jo Pa? #insult #no class as a hawkeye fan I find it in poor taste.”

Kutcher pleaded ignorance, claiming that he wasn’t up on the alleged Penn State child abuse scandal. He offered an apology via Twitter but the damage was done. When building a social media strategy–be it for sourcing and recruiting talent or for branding and advertising–your plan should ensure your people have a course of action outlined for cleaning up small mishaps before they become big messes. In the end, Kutcher got the message and turned over management of his Twitter account to his PR team.

3. American Red Cross Turns it Around. Some debacles have a happy ending. An employee of The American Red Cross sent out an inappropriate tweet via the @RedCross account indicating that employees were getting “slizzered” on Dogfish Head beer. To the surprise of many (and the joy of a vested few), Wendy Harman, Social Media Director for the Red Cross, was able to turn this around with grace and good humor. The rogue tweet was down within the hour, and Harman responded with a tweet assuring that the Red Cross was sober, adding, “we’ve confiscated the keys.” Meanwhile, they retained the (very embarrassed) employee, and Dogfish Head took the opportunity to launch a fundraising campaign for the Red Cross.

Because of their quick and classy response, the Red Cross turned a PR nightmare into a lesson in humility, and has been earning kudos since. This indicates a strong sense of teamwork and unity in the organization. “We are an organization that deals with life-changing disasters and this wasn’t one of them,” Harman told Mashable. “It was just a little mistake.”

Last Year’s Blunders: A Boon for HR in 2012?

While it’s easy to look back on social media snafus and share a laugh, HR professionals have their work cut out for them in the next year. The blunders of 2011 present a great opportunity for HR to step up to the plate and spearhead the design, implementation and oversight of formal social media policies for their organizations.

About the Author: Kyle Lagunas is the HR Analyst at Software Advice, a company that reviews HR systems. On the surface, it’s his job to contribute to the ongoing conversation on all things HR. Beyond that, he makes sure his audience is keeping up with important trends and hot topics in the industry. Focused on offering a fresh take on points of interest in his market, he’s not your typical HR guy. If you’re interested in reading this article in full, you can find it on his blog.

Segment(s) of the TSC Impacted: All

This January I continued the tradition of trying to predict what was to be in the New Year.   Now it is time to take a look to see how I did.

Some aspects of my predictions that looked uncertain at the midyear report card have come to fruition, but the context in which they came about wasn’t what was expected.  Others did well and others not as much…

Recovery, recovery, recovery

Grade- C+

Prediction- This year, especially the latter half, we will be fully focused on the economic recovery that will finally become wide spread.

That is not to say that we will see strong growth in the employment sector and I would be surprised to see the national unemployment rate drop to anything below 8% or even 8.5%, but all of us will hopefully see that things have started to turn around.

Commentary- Recovery is the talk, but not in a good way as it is often used in along with “slow” and “uncertain” or unsteady.”  I was very close to the mark with the unemployment rate at 8.6%.  Since the main prediction was that recovery would be well underway I can’t give myself a great grade.

Mobile will become the hot thing in Recruiting

Grade- A+

Prediction-   People are going from the mobile experience being something of a novelty to an expectation.  Someone will be using their phone in their living room just feet from their PC, but will expect to be able to search jobs without waiting for the PC to boot up, update, etc.

Commentary- Mobile is so pervasive that some vendors are trying to fake their way into it (see last month’s blog post about Mobile Site Posers).

Geo-Targeted recruitment advertising will grow, but not be wide-spread

Grade- B

Prediction- Products like FourSquare, Google and Facebook equivalents as well as others will find their way onto the media/social media plans for a small number of companies. Many other companies will watch to see what can be done with this platform.

Commentary- My midyear prediction that it would probably not take hold more until the war for talent resumes seems to be holding true, while I can’t say that the number of companies that are really using this met even my modest expectations I didn’t think I was entirely off the mark either.

Social media will flatten out

Grade- A

Prediction- This is the year that we will see social media start to flatten out.  But that’s not to say it won’t continue to grow, it will just do so at a more modest pace.

Commentary- This seems to continue to be the case, with social media IPOs being more of the news than their traffic growth.  I found it very interesting to see the role social media has played in some critical events around the world.  While Google+ looked interesting at the midyear update, I am not sure how much impact it will have without Facebook really dropping the ball or a major innovative shift coming from Google.

Next month will be my predictions for 2012, which do not involve the end of the world!

If you have any questions, comments or anything you would like to add, feel free to send them my way!  All the best to you until next month!

© 2011 Michael K. Peterson, All Rights Reserved

Segment(s) of the TSC Impacted: Your Organizations Ability to Attract Candidates

Many of us know that the way we are interacting with the internet is changing rapidly, moving away from the time when we had a PC, tethered to a desk on a slow dial up connection to a fast means of accessing almost anything in the palm of our hands from almost anywhere.  People are changing the way they find jobs in the same way they are changing how they shop and how they post content to their social media platforms

Although I have been and continue to be an advocate for companies moving to mobile career sites and apps, I come to you this month with a warning that should not be a surprise.

Beware of the posers
Just like in the early days of job boards and social media, there are a number of companies that are out there trying to convince you that what they have is what you seek- a mobile career site.

Last year I wondered why ATS providers were not jumping into this to gain competitive advantage.

Through my networking and collaborations with some of you, I have become aware of some interesting developments and this year we saw some of the first ATS providers coming out with mobile sites and unfortunately a couple that are outright posers.

Sadly, these companies are not small start ups or fly by night companies, they are sizeable and well known and it’s a shame that at least some of the in their organizations are pitching something that is not the truth until pressed.  This month I will give you the basic questions to ask and the unfortunate half-truths that I am aware of…

The question
The first version of the question is actually quite simple and that is probably why it can be easy for a sales team to try to pull a quick one over on people.  The question is:

“Does your product provide a mobile career site?”

This is where the problem lies… in its simplicity.  I will take you through three instances where a potential customer could have come away with entirely the wrong impression and would have made the wrong decision, at least in regards to mobile recruiting, as a result.

Problem answer #1: Yes we have a mobile site
You may be thinking what is the problem?  Well in this case, I actually don’t think the vendor was being purposely misleading, but here is a synopsis of the rest of the answer:

“Recruiters can log in review candidates, post jobs, schedule interviews, etc.”

Notice there is no mention of candidates?  When asked a slightly different question, the vendor had a different answer:

“Does your product provide a mobile career site for job seekers…”

The answer? “No”

It’s nice that Recruiters can do stuff, but it’s far more important that job seekers be able to do stuff.  Plus, I don’t know about you, but as a Recruiter there is only so much I am willing to do from a smartphone.

Problem answer #2: Yes we have a mobile site
Again all seems well, and the vendor happily showed the potential customer his iPhone with a cool looking app.  The problem didn’t arise until one of the review team members said “Where do I look for a job?” and another asked “Why is there the ability to run payroll?”

The first problem answer was forgivable, this one is not.  There was not only no ability to search jobs, there was nothing to do with recruiting on the app either… this was an HR/Payroll app shame, shame, shame.

Problem answer #3: Yes we have a mobile site
So you get it by now and are wondering what happened.  Similar to the previous example, someone was proud to show off their iPhone and the team looked at it and seemed impressed until someone noticed that this was just the full website of the a client company.  When pressed, the vendor maintained that they had a mobile site and it looks great.  Continued pressing from the review team finally got the vendor to admit that they didn’t have a mobile site, but that “the site renders beautifully on an iPhone.”

That’s all great, but since the screen, even an iPhone is tiny, and 0.5 pitch is difficult for anyone to read I would say this vendor is a total poser… the sad thing was the person being pressed was the company’s President, not an over-eager sales person trying to get commission.

Conclusion
So beware when you meet with vendors about this new platform we all have to manage.

The key question is not whether or not they can provide a mobile site, but is actually a series or slightly more complicated questions.  Here are some of the questions I recommend asking:

Does your current product provide a mobile careers site that enables job seekers to have a mobile experience similar to those visiting our full version website, including searching for and viewing jobs?

What mobile platforms do you support?  iPhone, Android, iPad, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile?

Note: If they support iPhone and Android you are well covered, many iPhone apps work on an iPad; Windows Mobile market share is too small and BlackBerry is declining rapidly.  If you did want to add a third platform, add iPad since an iPad app can be much more robust than an iPhone app.

Do you support mobile websites or downloadable apps, or both?

What types of content can you support?  Is the site simply a job search interface or can we have text content, pictures and video to create a rich user experience?

How refined can the job search be?  Do users have only a couple options or several that deliver targeted results?

Does the mobile site at any time send the user to the full version site? If the answer is yes, then it is not a mobile site!

The important thing is to not go into this blind… just like anything else!

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to send them my way!

© 2011 Michael K. Peterson, All Rights Reserved

Segment(s) of the TSC Impacted: All

We all seem to be waiting for the economy to turn around, and many of us have given up hope in a sense.  We hear it regularly, including on my blog, “… is this the new normal?”

I think it’s a legitimate question.  This recovery, if you can call it that, has been jobless and some would say almost hapless, seeming to be knocked back down by bad news coming from all fronts at all times.

Amidst all the bad news, there was a snippet of good news that could make a big difference when and how things turn around.

The rapid growth of emerging markets
This is something we really have not seen before on the scale that we have now.  The impact of this on the employment market could be significant and may be the engine of economic growth that we all need to pull ourselves out of the recession and start adding jobs to the economy.

Take a look at the top 10 rising economies according to the Business Insider from March 2011.

1. Nigeria
2. India
3. Iraq
4. Bangladesh
5. Vietnam
6. Philippines
7. Mongolia
8. Indonesia
9. Sri Lanka
10. Egypt

Total projected GDP by 2050: $135.05 Trillion
Average year over year growth: 7.3%

I bet many of you are surprised by at least half of the countries on the list and by at least one country that is missing from the list,China.  To be fair, this list is a ranking of year over year growth vs. total GDP or size of the economy, but what I find interesting is that the total GDP that they represent is still significant and when combined, significantly more than China’s.

For comparison, and to bring to light how much GDP is missing with large, still emerging, but “slower” growth economies,China’s GDP is projected to be $123 Trillion by 2040.  In 2050, the top 5 countries in the G20 are projected to beChina, US,India,JapanandBrazilin that order, which points to the fact that emerging markets are widespread.

Manufacturing jobs
One of the areas that could see a significant increase in business opportunities are within the manufacturing sector.  In many parts of the world, US products are still viewed to be of high quality and value.  Just look at China and how American cars are viewed as a luxury item.

One question is how much this will translate to a positive impact on the US job market.  Will it create many direct manufacturing jobs or will it create a smaller number of administrative and professional level jobs only because the American product is made overseas?

The other question is whether or not American companies can react quickly enough to get products that appeal to these emerging markets into the hands of their consumers to build and sustain brand loyalty.  Fortunately I think we are doing fairly well in this arena, but we cannot be complacent.

Research and development jobs
One area that the US still dominates is research and development.  While other countries continue to make progress, fortunately so do we! 

These jobs will become more critical as we need to make products that appeal to more and more different markets to maintain market share, gain competitive advantage and continue to build brand loyalty.

So these jobs will include many of the areas that immediately come to mind (software, consumer electronics, etc.) and many that do not immediately come to mind (food products, beverages, home goods, consumer products, etc.)

Shipping/transportation and logistics jobs
Always an early indicator of a economy reviving, we could see growth here early on as companies ship more products to new markets, demand for individuals within these areas would naturally follow.

Import/Export jobs
If theUS is able to position its products to appeal to these emerging markets, demand for Import and Export Professionals could increase significantly, with the Import side depending on what products these emerging economies produce and whether or not Americans will have a need for them…

The economy in general
While the segments I spoke about will likely see a significant increase, trade and wealth generation (even in emerging economies) create jobs.  So many other sectors of the economy will see some increase in job growth.

Conclusion
I think we all agree that this economy has some way to go before everyone is back to work, but this could be the light at the end of the tunnel.

Part of the challenge we have now is that we cannot rely on domestic consumer spending to pull the economy out of recession because all of us have spending constraints compared to 5 years ago. 

A real possibility is the increase in consumer spending coming from overseas, with emerging markets, notEuropeleading the way and established Asian economies following closely behind.  If that creates enough growth for the US consumer to feel confident again, we could see a very robust, but different, economic recovery than those of the past.

And of course that all means, the war for talent returns… this time, with some new fronts!

Feel free to share your thoughts!

© 2011 Michael K. Peterson, All Rights Reserved

Segment(s) of the TSC Impacted: Your Organizations Ability to Source Candidates

Hardly a day goes by without receiving some sort of pitch from a placement firm.  I think this isn’t a big difference from anyone else in a leadership role within a Recruiting department, but I think what would surprise some people is what I hear from corporate recruiters that makes me want to slam my head into my desk.

So this month I thought I would give my unscientific top five things that each side needs to do better list.

Top five things that placement firms can do to work with corporate recruiters

1. Know yourself and/or your organization
   If your firm specializes in helping organizations that have little to no corporate recruiting capability, or does especially well helping organizations in regions that people don’t want to move to or a certain size of organization, etc. learn that, know that and own that.  I can’t tell you how many times I talk to firms that in the course of our review I determine do a good job placing people, but only because the companies they work with have no recruiting team to speak of. 
2. Figure me out before calling
   I don’t expect you, as someone that is cold calling me, to know all about me (although it’s pretty easy to find out a lot about people nowadays), but at least know what industry I am in, what openings I have and a little about my teams capability.  For example, on a regular basis I get calls and emails from companies that want to place people with me for Software Engineering or Electrical Engineering… well since I work for a hospital system it’s a waste of my time to even return your call now isn’t it? 
3. Just because I have an opening doesn’t mean I need help
   I can’t stand it when I open a position and an hour later I get a call from someone saying “…I see that you just posted xyz position open, do you need help?”  Or I see you have (fill in the blank for an entry level position) open, can we work on that?  In the first case, it would be rare that I would feel that we needed outside help and that I would post the position without already talking to someone, in the second case, I honestly should be fired it I can’t find an entry level person. 
4. Don’t be clueless
   If I am going to go to a hiring manager and recommend that we use you, do you really think if you call me and you know nothing about my company, the role, the industry, the profession and already have presented a plan to fill the role that goes beyond posting something on a bunch of job boards (guess what- I know how to do that too) that you are going to be the one I recommend?  Don’t waste my time, but if you want to waste yours more power to you and call someone else… 
5. Work within my process (if there is one)
   I know you hate this, but we do need to have some kind of process in place.  Most of the time, this shouldn’t get in the way and sometimes it ends up benefiting all involved.  You will also appreciate the next section though, because this is one of the things I address on the corporate side as well.

Top five things that corporate recruiters can do to work with headhunters (surprise- some of this is similar to what is above!)

1. Know yourself and/or your organization
   For the corporate side of things, we need to know our organizations, the openings, the managers, the requirements (tangible and intangible).  We also need to know what we are good at as a recruiting team and plan and react accordingly when positions are open.  So if we aren’t strong recruiting certain specialties, we need to still put our best effort in and get better at it, but also need to come up with plans that probably include placement firms to meet the objective of finding the talent we need, regardless of where it comes from.  Many organizations know when they have a tough position to work on, but they fail to do anything about it. 
2. Let go of “us vs. them”
   I sort of understand where this comes from… the adversarial relationship that some corporate recruiters hold on to.  This is a classic example of you get what you incent.  In the past, many corporate recruiting departments looked at needing a placement firm as a sign that they failed because many times that is indeed how it was viewed by leadership and internal clients.  I think this has largely changed because of the complexity of the workforce and the acknowledgement that everyone cannot be good at everything.  Placement firms do need to be used diligently (I would not be employed if suddenly 80% of the placements came from outside firms), but the adversarial view needs to go and good placement firms need to viewed as partners and an extension of the internal teams capability.  I can’t stand it when a corporate recruiter will keep doing things they know have very little chance of working just to keep from using an outside firm. 
3. Get out of the way
   Corporate Recruiters also need to know when to get out of the way.  We have a role in helping with the selection of the placement firm, negotiating the contracts, setting up reasonable processes, etc., but beyond that the gate keeper mentality needs to go.  Once the contract is in place, let the placement firm talk to the hiring manager directly, there is no value in the corporate recruiter relaying this level of information.  Have the placement firm submit directly to the hiring manager and have them cc: you so the candidate can be checked out internally (did they recently apply, are they a former employee?) and set up regular short status meetings so all those involved can stay on top of issues.  Beyond that step aside! 
4. Don’t be clueless
   Nothing drives me nuts like when I ask a Recruiter to tell me about the role they have been working on for 2 months and all they can do is stumble around while they read me the posting… really?  Well since we’ve submitted 20 people that meet those requirements, perhaps it’s time to actually pin the manager down on what they really want!  We need to know the department, the manager, the role, the skills needed, etc.  If we don’t then we have failed and certainly if the placement firm is not able to find this out, they will also fail. 
5. Create a reasonable process
   I touched on this a bit in number 3, but it’s worth emphasizing.  Make sure the process you have is reasonable.  This starts with a reasonable contract and as little intervention as possible by you.  Good people can only do good work when they are allowed to by not having others get in the way.  I think it’s reasonable to sit in on the meeting or conference call as the placement firm talks to the hiring manager (you will probably learn some things), but it’s not reasonable to be the gate keeper and not allow the placement firm to speak to the manager at all.  It is reasonable to ask to be copied on submissions so you can check on past interactions with the candidate (if any), but I would be cautious in requiring that resumes be submitted to you and then you in turn send them on to the manager.

Conclusion

I certainly understand where a lot of the problems with the corporate recruiter placement firm relationship come from.  Past measures of success (or failure) are among them, but there is an unfortunate number of placement firms that are not interested in being anyone’s partner and are only interested in fees and still more that are not malicious, but are either poorly run or are trying too hard to be what they are not.

On the corporate side, the problems also abound, with Recruiters that are nothing more than administrators that process paper to those that have no clue what their internal clients need to those that simply insecure.

Successful organizations realize that there are plenty of problems on both sides and work toward resolving them by having a strong review process in place for placement firms and in coaching and sometimes removing recruiters when they do not align themselves with the greater needs of the organization.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to send them my way!

© 2011 Michael K. Peterson, All Rights Reserved

Segment(s) of the TSC Impacted: Nearly all

One thing that I wondered when watching the weather here in Southern California was, if were always below “normal” or average rainfall, shouldn’t the average (or “normal”) start to move down until it reaches some sort of equilibrium, where recent “normal” is roughly equal to reported or referenced “normal?”

As I thought about this, I began thinking about the employment market and how long this recession has been and how much longer it seems like it might be, when a similar thought hit me… what if this is the “new normal?”

So if  the new normal is 9.0%+ long term unemployment, wild swings in the market, complete lack of consumer confidence and next to nothing housing market what does that mean to us in talent acquisition?  Do we throw out all the old strategies because all our positions are filled?  Do we shift to becoming gatekeepers again?  Do we do something entirely different?  The answers could be different than what you expect.

Top three impacts

Impact number one- working longer whether they want to or not
We need to be prepared for people to work with our organizations not only longer, but we need to be ready for them to work with us when they really didn’t want to.  This is not just about people working past retirement, although that is part of this, its people that are working with you because they have few other options.  This can be someone that was highly competent and motivated 6 years ago, but now they are ready for a change but cannot find that opportunity because of the market.  What does all this mean?  We need to have strong performance management systems in place, proactive practices that identify when someone is struggling and/or dissatisfied and good tools for assessing what the true root cause of the problem is.  Companies need to look at themselves from a cultural perspective and decide exactly how much they are going to be willing to work with people to resolve these issues and be consistent as litigation will likely increase as frustrations among workers continue to build.

We also need to have strong succession plans in place for when people do leave as it may be a sudden move… whether it be the person that gets fed up with waiting and just leaves one day or someone that moves quickly out of fear of losing a new opportunity, we need to be ready to turn around much more quickly than we have before with much more purpose.

Impact number two- smart screening
Screening technologies and techniques could become more critical than any of us thought if unemployment continues to remain high.  We will need to build competency assessment systems that not only give us basic information about what someone knows, but will need to be strong enough and reliable enough for us to be able to convince doubting managers that even though someone has been out of the workforce for 5 years, the tool indicates that they have remained competent and that this is the individual we should hire.  Sadly in a market with prolonged unemployment, the best person for the position may be the person that does not have a job right now.

The system also needs to be reliable for another reason; it needs to be able to withstand close scrutiny in a court and by government agencies like EEOC, OFCCP and state agencies like DFEH.  Complaints, charges and lawsuits go hand in hand with frustrated people and we’ve seen this already for some time.

Impact number three- social media and CRM become more important
Being able to fill positions quickly from a group of potential candidates that are already engaged, interested and perhaps somewhat pre-qualified may become a critical firewall for companies that are trying to shield themselves from mass numbers of candidates and the potential liability that could come along with them.

Companies could build relationships with people on social media sites, eventually move them into a talent community and start marketing new positions to them first.  Of course you could not exclusively market to them, you do need to make your positions publically available, but you can significantly shorten the time your position is open to the public by having people ready and engaged for opportunities with your company.

Conclusion
While I hope this is not the “new normal” I think it is prudent for all of us to think about what that could mean for our respective organizations.  Obviously my top impacts may be very different than an organization with a strong international presence or that works with a different segment of the market than I do.

In either case, we may need to be prepared to both screen and engage people at the same time, which is a challenge for many of us.

In reality, whether this is the “new normal” or not, these practices are sound ones that would be good to pursue in any economic environment.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to send them my way!

© 2011 Michael K. Peterson, All Rights Reserved

Segment(s) of the TSC Impacted: All

This January I continued the tradition of trying to predict what was to be in the new year.   As I did last year, I thought this would be a good moment to take pause and see how those predictions are coming along.

I think I did a little better with this year’s midyear report card than last, but some things remain uncertain.

Recovery, recovery, recovery

Grade- Who knows at this point!

Prediction- This year, especially the latter half, we will be fully focused on the economic recovery that will finally become wide spread.

That is not to say that we will see strong growth in the employment sector and I would be surprised to see the national unemployment rate drop to anything below 8% or even 8.5%, but all of us will hopefully see that things have started to turn around.

Commentary- Well, we are all talking about the recovery, but more in the way people waiting for a late bus talk about what happened.  So we have some pockets of recovery, but it’s really questionable if this is going to take hold throughout the nation anytime soon.   Just a month ago, I thought this would be a very different entry, but this economy is struggling to get to its feet more than any other post recession economy.  I still think we will have a national unemployment rate that is somewhere between 8.5% and 9% later this year, which is still better than it was.

Mobile will become the hot thing in Recruiting

Grade- A

Prediction-   People are going from the mobile experience being something of a novelty to an expectation.  Someone will be using their phone in their living room just feet from their PC, but will expect to be able to search jobs without waiting for the PC to boot up, update, etc.

Commentary- I think this was one prediction that has really started to take hold.  Talking about mobile is wide spread, more and more companies have mobile sites (including mine) and the first ATS/TMS to provide a mobile experience for candidates (not just Recruiters like many) is available on the market.

Geo-Targeted recruitment advertising will grow, but not be wide-spread

Grade- C

Prediction- Products like FourSquare, Google and Facebook equivalents as well as others will find their way onto the media/social media plans for a small number of companies. Many other companies will watch to see what can be done with this platform.

Commentary- The part about it not being wide spread is definitely true, and there are some companies that are using this, but not many.  This is something that may catch on next year for some, and many will likely table this until the war for talent fully returns.

Social media will flatten out

Grade- A

Prediction- This is the year that we will see social media start to flatten out.  But that’s not to say it won’t continue to grow, it will just do so at a more modest pace.

Commentary- We’ve seen the demise of MySpace (although I would have never predicted Timberlake buying it) and other platforms are starting to or continuing to flatten out.  LinkedIn showed some increases in traffic because of new services, but according to Quantcast, Facebook is growing, but  slowing and Twitter seems to be possibly starting a decline.  This does not spell the beginning of the end by any means, rather that it has reached a new level.  It will be interesting to see how Google+ impacts all of this.

If you have any questions, comments or anything you would like to add, feel free to send them my way!  All the best to you until next month!

© 2011 Michael K. Peterson, All Rights Reserved

Segment(s) of the TSC Impacted: Your organizations ability to source candidates and Your organizations ability to sell open positions

At most organizations employee opinion surveys (EOS) are viewed skeptically.  Employees roll their eyes, thinking that once again they are asking for my opinion and it will lead to nothing.   The managers, namely the ones that need the feedback most, hate this exercise because it only confirms what they don’t want to admit.  Human Resources beats their head against the wall because they have to administer this ritual only to be frustrated by the combination of suspected poor managers being confirmed as such with actual data and the lack of willingness by leadership to do anything about it.

I could point out the obvious things that we should be doing, anchoring portions of the manager’s annual bonus to their EOS score, recognizing those that are doing a great job or, the most obvious, simply doing something about those that perform poorly.

But I am not here to point out the obvious… I am here to share something different.

What if, we borrowed some concepts from the familiar practice of peer reviews on product and retail sites like Amazon.com?  What if we put the overall EOS score for each department on their job postings?

Resistance
I’ll be the first to admit that my own organization probably wouldn’t go as far as putting every departments overall score on the departments postings, but I think this is something to move toward.

Certainly the knee-jerk reaction would be “are you crazy?” from both leadership and Human Resources.  VPs and Directors would immediately know and be concerned about the impact on recruiting for poor performing departments… after all, who in their right mind would apply for a position where the department’s score is 1 out of 5 or even 2 out of 5?

The real problem
What is more disappointing is that we allow unsuspecting candidates to apply for those positions out of ignorance…  How upset would you be if you found out that a retail website was actually withholding or manipulating peer review scores on their products?  I suspect you would be pretty pissed.  If pervasive enough, there would likely be investigations and inquiries from the authorities and tremendous brand damage…  But here we are, essentially doing the same thing!

But once again, since we all live in the Information Age, anyone that thinks they control information simply by suppressing it is delusional at best and is doing more harm than good.

As we all should have learned by now from social media, just because we aren’t talking doesn’t mean that no one is talking.

The problem is the person doing the talking is generally a disgruntled employee that is really “motivated” and they are going to any number of sites to let everyone know what they think about your poor performing department.

Don’t believe me?  Go to Glassdoor.com and see what is listed about your company.  This is in addition to anything people are saying on social media and to their friends.

So once again, we have turned the conversation over to a wacko and we’re hoping that no one listens…

What’s worse is that you can’t win either way on these sites… any positive reviews are a best viewed with suspicion that the post was from someone who has other motivations (i.e. HR).

A better way
Now let’s imagine an alternative where your company takes the bold step of posting all their EOS scores.

Managers would suddenly pay attention to the scores, for different reasons, but they will be focused them.  They could be concerned about being able to recruit staff (and funny the bad ones probably need to recruit the most), they may be concerned about how their director of VP would react, but I suspect for most it will be that they simply don’t want to look bad in front of everyone.   What is nice is that the ones that need help will be more motivated to seek it.

Some employees that weren’t being honest before will be honest now.  Why?  Because even the semi-smart ones will realize that if I am slamming the boss just to slam them, they will have a hard time hiring new people to replace those that left, leaving more people for the remaining staff.

Employees will also see that the survey has value.  Instead of just being an exercise of checking off the EOS box for the next “Best Placeto Work” survey there is useful, actionable data and rewards and consequences for managers.

Human Resources will finally see that something constructive is being done with the survey information and perhaps this will be just the beginning of things that make EOS worth it.

Candidates will obviously gravitate to higher rated departments and will likely respect the organization for putting the scores on postings.  The company would also get a great boost in word of mouth type recognition among prospective candidates for being open and honest.

Retention would also improve because candidates will make more informed decisions.  Your company would also decrease the brand damage from good talent coming into bad departments and leaving to tell anyone that may consider your company how bad it is.

Information on sites like Glassdoor would still be posted and reviewed, but if your site has EOS data on it, many prospective candidates would not feel the need to check the site.  Those that do go to Glassdoor will realize that they can check the comments posted there against the EOS information to see if it matches or if there is inconsistency between the two, allowing them to make a more informed decision.

Ways to implement
I would be surprised if most companies posted EOS scores for all their departments, but there is a less threatening way to at least start adding some of the information.

I suggest that you start with posting EOS information about the best performing departments only.  You could work with Marketing or your Advertising Agency to create a special logo that indicates if a department is a “Top 10” department as rated by its employees, or the top department at a particular site, etc.

This allows the concept to get started as a recognition program.  Which will encounter significantly less resistance after all, how could leadership not support both lending credibility to the EOS and having a cheap (nearly free) way to recognize high performing departments?

This could set the stage to later expand the program in the future to include more and more scores until they become more widely used.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to send them my way!

© 2011 Michael K. Peterson, All Rights Reserved

Segment(s) of the TSC Impacted: Branding and candidate awareness, Your organizations ability to source candidates

Somewhat recently, there has been a lot of discussion about .jobs.  Much of the discussion that I have seen has little to do with whether or not this is a good idea or not.  Most of it centers on the controversy between SHRM, Employ Media who SHRM partnered with to manage the top level domain and ICANN, the organization that essentially manages major functions of the internet.

ICANN has brought action against Employ Media stating they are violating the .jobs charter and brings into question whether or not SHRM got in over their heads and/or partnered with the right people.

I think there is a larger more important question that may make all of this largely irrelevant- Does .jobs matter?

For those of you that aren’t familiar, .jobs is a top level domain (TLD) similar to the more popular .com, .edu and .gov.  ICANN released .jobs to SHRM with the thought that the leading HR organization would be able to manage the registration process more effectively than the existing process that has been in place for all other domains.  This process is where domain registration companies take registration requests and if it’s available the registration is yours.

On a side note that I have to point out, when you register a .jobs domain, you first go to Employ Media’s site, which then has… wait for it…links to the same domain registration companies that handle all the other registrations anyway, now that’s value add SHRM- thanks for adding needless layers and now legal complication to things!

Side bar over, back to the .jobs domain… The intended purpose for .jobs was to become a “shortcut” that people could use to get to career sites.  So a company like Ford could have the domain ford.jobs.

On the surface this sounds interesting, but I have to wonder, who’s been wanting this?

Employers?
As an employer, I don’t see this as a huge benefit… my career site is decent, we market it well using a wide variety of tools, etc.  It’s reasonably well designed and most people can find what they are looking for.

On the other hand, the .jobs domain is very inexpensive to register and you could simply have the .jobs URL point to your career site and you’re pretty well covered.  So there isn’t anything compelling against getting it.

Job seekers?
It’s pretty rare that candidates can’t find a companies website and/or the jobs on it… if they can’t the sites usually poorly constructed, or the jobs aren’t listed or the candidate is computer illiterate.  So some may be interested in the convenience of the .jobs domain, but I am not sure people would not seek positions on non-.jobs domains in the same manner I could eventually see job seekers not apply for jobs with companies that lack a mobile or social media presence.

Job boards?
Certainly the job board industry isn’t interested in it.  In fact, they are leading the charge against the .jobs domain because they see it as a threat.  Just imagine a day where job seekers can find jobs on corporate career sites or by using something like SEO, SEM, Indeed, SimplyHired, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn… if only these things were a reality … oh wait… that’s right, they are aren’t they?  Well job boards you keep chasing away the big scary .jobs domain while everyone else eats your lunch…

Conclusion

So I guess there isn’t anyone that is clamoring for this.  While there are a lot of companies that have their .jobs domain (including mine) I think they have it because it is cheap and simple.

And just because a lot of companies have .jobs domains doesn’t mean that it will become anything significant or strategically or tactically important.

What’s my opinion?  .jobs doesn’t matter, but it will be widely used for a time and then fade away.  I think it’s an idea whose time has long passed that is only being saved by its simplicity and very modest cost.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to send them my way!

© 2011 Michael K. Peterson, All Rights Reserved

Segment(s) of the TSC Impacted: All

Several members of my team and I attended the SHRM Talent & Staffing Management Conference that just took place here inSan Diego.  I wanted to share some of our thoughts and experience as well as what was presented as the state of talent acquisition.

Conference overview
This was my first time attending this conference as was the case for most of my team.  All of us felt the conference had good, solid, practical information that seemed to skew slightly more toward corporate talent acquisition professionals vs. our colleagues that work for placement firms or headhunters.

The personality of the conference was much lighter than International SHRM which I have attended several times in the past, including last year inSan Diego.  This made for a much better experience.

The information was much more focused and relevant for me being in talent acquisition and I didn’t struggle to find something that I could at least pass the time with as I do occasionally at International SHRM.  While International SHRM has made significant improvements in providing content for those of us talent acquisition, we are still somewhat overlooked.

By comparison to ERE, which I have also attended a few times, this conference was a little more main stream and less cutting edge.  For some organizations that is probably not a bad thing.  Why go to a conference like ERE that focuses more on the leading edge when your organization still runs ads in the paper and your team still wonders if social media is really going to take off?  That is not to say that this conference was lacking for good content and some leading edge processes, because it still had some of that.

I would say the overall theme was engagement of employees and of candidates, which seemed to be interwoven throughout many sessions, but let me share some of my experience more specifically.

Social media is still a big player
I attended a great session presented by Matt Kaiser, who is always on top of his game, about social media and it became very apparent that social media is maturing and perhaps flattening out a bit, but it is still growing, companies are becoming much more sophisticated with it and a lot of potential remains for it as a tool.

Many best practices will likely come from consumer brands that need to engage customers, investors, employees and candidates. One example provided was a video of Gatorade’s “Mission Control” which is where they monitor their social media presence, and I suspect the presence of the individuals that are endorsing their product.  The video can be found on YouTube by searching Gatorade Mission Control.  While it doesn’t provide a lot of meaningful content, it is interesting to see how very seriously they must be taking these channels to engage people.

Recruiting Veterans
You may know that OFCCP is focused on how companies are recruiting veterans for a variety of reasons including the issue of integrating veterans that will be coming back fromAfghanistan andIraq into the civilian labor market.  Aside from the obvious problem of trying to manage more people coming into the labor market, it is also the right thing to do for those that have sacrificed for us.

The session on Tactics for Attracting and Recruiting Veterans with Disabilities presented by Lisa Rosser from The Value of a Veteran was excellent in that it was clear, practical and made sense.   One tactic is one that is pretty obvious, yet overlooked.  Use similar messaging that the military itself uses to recruit people into the military as those themes will only resonate even more with people exiting the military.

Themes include being part of an elite group, challenging work, training opportunities, your work impacts others, and camaraderie within the team.

But she pointed out that we also most go beyond just themes and take the same approach to recruiting veterans we do to college recruiting with welcoming messaging specific for them, content focused on them and ways to engage them across all media.

Mobile
While I can’t recall any specific sessions about using mobile platforms in talent acquisition, right on the heels of social media being woven into many sessions, was mobile.

It was discussed in many of the sessions that I attended that were focused on other topics, including recruiting veterans.

My take is when something pervades topics that seem unrelated, that is something to become part of.

From the exhibit hall
I always take a couple passes through the exhibit hall to see what is going on in the market.  There were some interesting things that I came across as I walked through.

No major ATS/TMS vendors were at the event.  This surprised me somewhat, and it could be because they elected to go to ERE, which was also in San Diego just a couple weeks earlier, but not only were their no major players, there really weren’t that many mid level players either.  I suspect that this space is hurting from the recession and we may see further consolidation of vendors or outright failure of some smaller ones in the next year or so.

It also seemed like every other vendor was a testing vendor or background check vendor.  As I thumb through the exhibitor directory I see my observation was not far off, with 16 of the 52 falling into this category (or 30.7%).

Most striking from the exhibit hall was the lack of anything that seemed new…  Perhaps the vendor was at ERE, as I mentioned, the more leading edge conference of the two, but I also feel like it may be because our space has been struggling…  we always take a hit from a recession and certainly this one was a bigger one than most.  I see plenty of opportunity for some bright people to come to market with something that truly moves us in new directions within the next couple years.

Conclusion
Speaking to the other attendees, it seemed like all of us are getting busier and that the worst is behind us.

However there are significant challenges that are before us, including how to engage our employees and candidates better.  Certainly social media is one way to do so, but it will go beyond that to making sure our messaging, both internal and external, is authentic, resonates, and is on the mark with the audience regardless of the platform.

While we have some time because of the labor market to refine this, the next round of the war for talent will be upon us sooner than we realize.  Those that do not find a way to engage people will be at a huge disadvantage, which seemed to be the message between the lines of this conference.

As always, feel free to share your thoughts!  Until next month, all the best to you!

© 2011 Michael K. Peterson, All Rights Reserved