Blog

Forget Candidate Experience. What About Recruiter Experience?

We’re always so focused on candidate experience. What about Recruiter Experience?

MSDFADO EC034I hear lots about candidate experience.  There are even fab awards to help us stay focussed on this often under-invested area. (Congrats to the recent winners of the UK awards, by the way.)

I have been recruiting recently for a project manager and a trainer.  And what a totally frustrating experience!  We often hear horror stories about recruiters doing a Falling Down Michael Douglas style, going “off reservation” and losing their minds via LinkedIn, Twitter, email, phone etc…

These little rants go viral and before we know it MDs of recruitment firms are having to put down their whiteboard pens and help mitigate PR disasters. Watching the progress of the CandEs coupled with doing my own recruitment has got me thinking about the recruiter experience.

What About Recruiter Experience?

I was speaking to a seasoned (mature) recruiter the other day.  One who has run a few firms and owned/sold a very successful one – he admitted that whenever he told people what he did, he would have to justify himself and almost market the role to those in the room.  The role of the recruiter is much maligned and often misunderstood – and often by recruiters themselves!

This blog is dedicated to the recruiters out there who have high pressure roles, smaller margins than ever before, candidates wasting recruiter time with poor or inappropriate applications, so much technology that they barely have time to make a call before another electronic alert or a blog claiming to show them the latest “cool tool” distracts them….

8 Things Candidates Do To Ruin the Recruiter Experience

Here are 8 things that I believe are totally ruining the recruiter experience, and things which I feel every recruiter needs to be cut a little slack for.

This has been my own experience with ONE advert – bless the recruiter who has to deal with this every day of their lives…

So here’s to the recruiter who has to deal with the following every minute of every day: 

  1. Candidates who have not read the advert but can now apply due to the “fabulous” mobile world we now live in (ie. candidates in their pyjamas watching TV and click “buy” on a job.)
  2. Candidates who claim that they are applying because they want to change direction.  When did the recruitment industry ever market itself as offering that kind of service??
  3. Candidates who do not respect the role.  (For example, I have been a soft skills and IT trainer for 20 years.  I have undergone huge amounts of training and work experience – this does not equate to sitting next to someone with a mouse and giving them a 5 minute tutorial on how to login to LinkedIn.  I am looking for qualified, experienced people – training your grandma is neither!)
  4. Candidates who don’t bother tailoring their CV and not even enclose a covering letter explaining their reasons for applying for the role. I’m a recruiter not a mind reader!
  5. Candidates who are not able to travel or relocate when the advert clearly states this as a requirement.
  6. The advert asks the applicant to be “into social media” (for example).  I check you out online and you claim to be an expert in social media and what do I see?  Nothing!!!
  7. “Dear sir” – try harder! Now I’m not a raving feminist, but I am a woman and getting Dear sir emails wind me up (especially when you have just completed steps 1 – 6 above!)
  8. When you get a rejection, one that’s been penned just for you, one that I have spent a little time trying to let you down gently as you have pretty much done all of the above…  don’t reply with a “f **k you” email – you are sure to go on my recruitment database as “do not interview”.

Candidates who do the above are causing a horrible situation for the average recruiter. Bottle necks of stupid applications, a proliferation of “cool tools “ and technology marketed as being the next passive talent identifier, demanding clients giving vacancies to more than one recruiter in order to (theoretically) get the best level of service, candidates taking counter offers… all of the above making a recruiter’s day pretty damn hard!

So as John Sumser put it recently when I appeared on his HR Examiner Radio Show (recording above): “You seem to be on a tear for improving the image of the recruiting industry. What’s motivating you?”
Read points 1 to 8 above.  I’m not saying that some of the bad press is deserved, but let’s get some perspective…

I have always been on their side, but right now, I am stood there like Michael Douglas in Falling Down getting angry.  (Although I promise not to do all of the bad things he did in the film… honest!)

Are you a recruiter?  What frustrates you about the current setup / reputation of your role?  Are you embarrassed by being a recruiter, or do you feel you work in a great industry?  Has technology turned you into Robocop?  Is the mobile world creating issues for you in terms of quality and expectation?

What’s your recruiter experience???

Lisa JonesAbout the Author: Lisa Jones is a Director of Barclay Jones, a consultancy working with agency recruiters on their recruitment technology and social media strategies. Prior to Barclay Jones. Lisa worked in a number of Recruitment, IT, Web and Operations director-level roles. She is a technology and strategy junkie with keen eyes on the recruitment and business process.

You’ll see Lisa speaking at many recruitment industry events and being a recruitment technology and social media evangelist online. She works with some of the large recruitment firms, as well as the smaller, agile boutique agencies.

You can follow Lisa on Twitter @LisaMariJones or connect with her on LinkedIn.

Recruitment Blogging: #TruLondon Takeaways

The Matt Charney review of #TruLondon 2014.

truMy first day in England last week, trying to think about what the hell I wanted to say about recruitment blogging best practices other than they pretty much don’t exist – since blogs are both highly personal and subjective, a medium where experimentation trumps templates when done correctly, I thought I’d get a little inspiration.

So, I ventured into Westminster Abbey to check off a long standing item on my bucket list – visiting Poet’s Corner.  This is like the nerdy Epicenter of the English language, a place where, in the course of a few square feet, you can view the actual tombs of literary luminaries ranging from Chaucer to Milton to the Bronte Sisters.

As someone who’s a total writing geek, the chronological crypt dense with the mortal remains of immortal writers who have shaped this craft, and my life (in many regards), left me feeling a little, well, overwhelmed.

Particularly since I knew that the next day at #TruLondon, I was going to have to speak about recruitment blogging for the first time (it’s not normally a topic I’d even think to speak on, particularly considering its subjective ambiguity as a medium).  Not only that, it was for a crowd that’s far different than, say, the state SHRM crowds there for their strategic credit, or even the cool social media kids who hang out swapping VC fish tales at the blogging conferences I also attend once in a while.

This was a crowd of some of the most notoriously snarky, highly opinionated and brutally direct UK “resourcing” (read: recruiting) professionals who not only presumably hated Yanks (and I meet pretty much every fat American stereotype), but also recruitment blogging – the latter, rightfully so, because there’s not a lot to like in a pretty shitty genre, all things considered.

So, I basically am going from the paragon of the English language in Westminster to the dregs of a basement conference room near where Jack the Ripper reportedly roamed and somehow try to fill 40 minutes with something somewhat substantantitive on a subject both entirely specious and subjective.

Surprisingly, however, it kind of kicked ass.  Here’s a brief recap of come of the most common questions we discussed – or you can check out the Banksy-inspired picture of my presentation since as much as I hate infographics, this one more or less suffices as an easy recap:

trulondon presentation

1. How Long Should It Be? A blog post is like a resume. While 500 words is a pretty good benchmark, if you have something to say, you should say it in as many or as few words as you need to get your experience and expertise across.  Paying attention to word count while writing, however, is a recipe for disaster, as you likely learned in high school English.  In this case, size truly doesn’t matter.  Style does.

2. How Often Should I Blog? Much like length, the answer is amorphous: when you have something to say.  I think a big mistake bloggers make, despite the prevailing sentiment to the contrary, is sacrificing quality for the sake of consistency.  The world has enough people out there cranking content to fuel the never satiated social media funnel without you making any sort of meaningful noise.  This shouldn’t feel like a job, and while self-imposing deadlines is OK, the easiest way to lose voice is by forcing it when, sometimes, silence is OK – particularly if this isn’t your day job.

3. What Should I Blog About? The easy answer is to pick a topic you want to be associated with, say, online sourcing and social media recruiting.  Then, all you really need to do is go to the Hubspot blog post generator, and you’ll have the basic templates for a million meaningless pieces of specious content marketing: 2014-03-03_19-53-51

PS: Please write about #1. I will love you forever.

But the hard answer, and the one that dominated the discussion in my session, is a simple one: recruiters rarely, if ever, get away from their reqs.  They live their challenges silently, kind of the professional equivalent of an offensive lineman: how well they do their job lies largely in how little they get noticed.

Which is why, I think, blogging has a certain appeal to recruiters.  After all, in a world where hiring managers dismiss you, job seekers disdain you and companies devalue you, having a platform to have a voice – your voice – out there in the world is inherently therapeutic and also invigorating.  Not every recruiter has something to say, which is cool – but the best ones know that sometimes there’s no other option but to add to the growing canon of talent acquisition tales from the trenches.

Here’s the bottom line: anything you’ll read about blogging says that the topics you should write about are largely determined by things like SEO, which is why numbered lists and how tos are ubiquitous in the world of “thought leadership” for the sake of driving traffic.

But if you write for an algorithim, no matter how much traffic you drive, most of your audience is going to be irrelevant.  Sure, you can take the tact of wanting to drive as many eyeballs through SEO as possible, but in a market that’s as competitive as this one for eyeballs and mindshare, chances are you’re better off posting on as many platforms as will publish you to achieve what you’re unlikely to get from Google.

When it comes to topics, programs like HR Marketer’s Insights or really any social media monitoring program like Radian 6 will show you that the topics that play in Peoria in this industry are stuff like healthcare and the Affordable Care Act, compliance and workforce planning.

I don’t know about you, but since my beat – and passion – has always been recruiting, these topics sound a little like a total snooze fest.  Plus, Betty in payroll who might happen upon an article via search isn’t my qualified audience – recruiters and talent acquisition professionals, not to mention those who develop products and market to those practitioners – are.

And the one thing that, no matter what your definition is of “who is a recruiter” or “what is sourcing” or any other number of stupid topics that often trend in this cannon of B2B BS, the stories that work follow a simple formula:

They keep it real.  And they come clean about the stuff recruiters deal with that they erroneously assume no one else has to experience.  We can talk about finding that perfect passive candidate who’s the ultimate culture fit all day, but we’ve all experienced losing that same “top talent” in the process because comp wouldn’t cough up a few extra bucks due to some stupid issue like “internal compression.”

We can talk about candidate experience all day, but the truth is, when you’re balancing 60 reqs and trying to survive in an age of outsourcing and offshoring, you’ve got more important things to worry about than an unqualified applicant’s feelings, idealism be damned.

And we can get as excited as we want about stuff like big data all day, but until we can accurately identify where our candidates are really coming from and how well each one does once they’re on the job, we know that this is just someone trying to sell us some silly service we need a lot less than a few more resources for recruiting the mountain of reqs we’re already working on.

People assume that these seemingly mundane issues aren’t worth talking about, but the truth of the matter is, there’s something intrinsically interesting about showing your expertise simply by showing what you go through every day.  Recruiters all over the world share the same challenges, the same triumphs, and above all else, the same professional insecurities and pragmatic personalities required to find the right talent for the right job at the right price.

It’s not the big ideas that make for interesting content – it’s the mundane stuff that’s not limited to some bulleted list or buzzword bingo competition.  Because we’re all suffering from the same universal truths as recruiters, as professionals, and as humans.  If all you’re doing is writing for writing’s sake, well, there are a whole lot more interesting genres than recruitment blogging, that’s for damn sure.

But there are, in my experience, very few that are as rewarding, have as few barriers for entry, or have a baseline for quality that’s so low – the expectation, ideally, is for edification, but if you can actually get an emotional reaction, well, that’s the entire point of all this blogging BS in the first place.

Even if it happens to piss them off a little.  That’s how you know it’s working.

The Problem With Middle of the Road Recruiting

recruitingLast month, Brandon Hall Group launched its first annual Talent Acquisition Benchmarking Survey and collected data on the priorities, processes, and plans of hiring organizations for 2014. I’ve spent the last few weeks slicing and dicing the data.

In trying to find the most compelling stories and identify the most important trends, I had to look at the data from several different angles. (It’s actually more exciting than it sounds.)

I started by comparing the responses of those who self-identified as less-than-effective hiring organizations (LEOs) with responses of self-identified highly effective hiring organizations (HEOs).

I immediately saw major disparities.

While the goals of these two distinct groups were similar, their processes – and the technology they rely on to support talent acquisition – were vastly different. For example:

  • More than 60% of HEOs plan for talent needs at least quarterly, versus 24% of LEOs (43% of LEOs don’t plan at all).
  • Nearly 70% of HEOs are measuring candidate experience, versus 35% of LEOS (55% of LEOs are not measuring at all).
  • More than 70% of HEOs are using a combination of applicant tracking systems and point solutions to manage talent acquisition process, versus 40% of LEOs (60% of LEOs use a hodgepodge of emails and spreadsheets).

Suffice to say, there is a massive difference between the scope and function of talent acquisition at HEOs and LEOs. But was there more to this story worth reporting? It’s relatively easy to compare highly effective and less-than-effective hiring organizations and call out weak points in process and misaligned priorities. Although this certainly makes for more sensational news, the bigger (and more important) challenge is bridging the gap between the two – and charting a course for improvement.

To that end, we thought it important to look at the data another way, and compare LEOs with those organizations that consider themselves moderately effective hiring organizations (MEOs). The result wasn’t pretty.

The Problem With Middle-of-the-Road Recruiting

According to our research, the biggest, and most obvious challenge for LEOs today is a lack of clear strategy for talent acquisition. The majority of struggling organizations are still relying heavily on reactionary recruiting processes wherein they only source talent when the need arises. What came as a surprise, however, was that a large number of MEOs are practicing many of the same bad habits. Most telling was the fact that only 26% of MEOs have matured to a point where they have even a high-level talent acquisition strategy.

But there are other similarities between LEOs and MEOs that are worth noting:

  • 44% of both LEOs and MEOs do not have a separate, discrete budget for talent acquisition. A lack of dedicated resources limits talent acquisition leaders’ ability to support efforts like bolstering recruitment marketing, strengthening employer brand, and improving candidate experience. This also makes it nearly impossible to plan for talent needs, never mind researching and selecting new and improved talent acquisition technology.
  • While an astounding 43% of LEOs aren’t using social technologies for talent acquisition, there are still 20% of MEOs that are also slow to adopt. What’s interesting, though, is that nearly 45% of both LEOs and MEOs are using social technologies ad hoc – again with no set strategy in place. Not surprisingly, both rated social networks as one of their least effective sourcing channels.
  • More than 1 in 4 LEOs take more than 8 weeks to hire new talent – from initial application to offer acceptance, compared to nearly 1 in 5 MEOs. What’s more, about 1 in 3 of both take at least two weeks to hire new employees after final candidate selection has been made – and 13% of MEOs take more than four weeks. While it’s true that efficiency metrics like time-to-fill and time-to-hire aren’t the best measure of overall talent acquisition performance, one can safely say that poor performance in both do little to improve candidate experience.

All told, both MEOs and LEOs are suffering from a lack of strategy as well as a lack of proper planning. The key difference, of course, is that those who self-identified as less than effective hiring organizations know they have work to do. Those who fall into the MEO category may be getting by for now, but their short-sighted approach to talent acquisition may catch up with them sooner than they realize.

It’s no secret that competition for talent is at an all-time high. Those who are still beholden to outdated (and ineffective) recruiting practices aren’t going to win this race – that is, not without some help. I have a few ideas on what LEOs and MEOs can be doing today to improve their ability to attract, hire, and retain talent tomorrow.

Keep your eyes peeled for my industry perspective report, which is due out in the next few weeks.

Originally Published On Talent Acquisition Today

Kyle Lagunas-9About the Author: As the Talent Acquisition Analyst at Brandon Hall Group, Kyle Lagunas heads up research in key practices in sourcing, assessing, hiring, and onboarding – as well recruitment marketing, candidate experience, and social recruiting.

Through primary research and deep analysis, he keeps today’s business leaders in touch with important conversations and emerging trends in the rapidly changing world of talent.

Kyle has spent the last several years offering a fresh take on the role of technology as part of an integrated talent strategy, and focuses on providing actionable insights to keep leading organizations a step ahead.

Previously the HR Analyst at Software Advice, he is regular contributor on SHRM’s We Know Next and TLNT, and his work has been featured in Forbes, The New York Times, Business Insider, Information Weekly, and HRO Today.

Follow Kyle on Twitter @KyleLagunas or connect with him on LinkedIn.

Data Security Risks Look More Like Your Employee than a Basement Hacker

Data security risks are a constant hassle when it comes to employee data. And your employees may be your biggest risk factor.

Data security risks are a constant hassle. Businesses are in a never-ending fight to insure that they protect themselves from data risks, but sometimes it feels like a losing battle.  Media sensation points fingers at hackers and reinforces the “dangerous outsider with malicious intent” narrative of data theft, but this narrative ignores the largest data risk for businesses — their employees.

Employee behavior and their (lack of) vigilance lead to an overwhelming number of security problems. From stolen laptops, BYOD woes, social media use, and lost gadgets, employee gaffes are a major source of data vulnerabilities.

Our infographic runs down the main forms of security risks employees entail:

Employee Data Breaches Infographic (1)

Maybe the most depressing take-away is that having an airtight security policy is not as effective at preventing these employee gaffes as we all wish it could be. For the amount of work businesses put into drawing up these policies, it is frustrating — though unsurprising — that most employees are often not aware of key components of their company’s security protocols.

What can be done if not through policy? Forcing employees to internalize these policies is out of the question — it’s not likely to be productive or effective. Instead, companies can familiarize themselves with the kinds of risks employee behavior can entail and respond accordingly.

There are ways to either pre-empt or troubleshoot security risks even when something like employees losing laptops occur. Devices can be encrypted, data can be wiped remotely, and BYOD can be managed. Knowing the risks is the first step in managing them.

It’s time to stop focusing entirely on the occasional bogeyman out to hack your data, and start thinking about how to manage those consistent,  real — and complicated — humans that make up your workforce.

Cam Roberson is the Director of Reseller Channel for Beachhead Solutions.

How To Remove A LinkedIn Contact

Instructions on How To Remove A LinkedIn Contact.

removing a contactYou’ve probably done it on Facebook and you’ve definitely done it on Twitter, but do you know how to remove a LinkedIn contact?

I myself have performed a Facebook “friend” cull after one too many primary school “friends” annoying dessert Instagrams began clogging up my newsfeed.

I’ve also had to unfollow many’s the annoying celebrity on Twitter (do you know how many times Rihanna tweets a day? Too many!) but I’ve never gotten rid of a LinkedIn connection.

Why? Well I’ve never had any reason to.

I’m on good terms with former bosses and the vast majority of my connections are relevant to my current industry and my job.

However, you may wish to disconnect from an old boss, dud candidates, an ex-spouse(s), primary/secondary school friends, old teachers or lecturers, irrelevant connections gathered through tangent network growth, the list is endless.

So what do you need to do to rid your network of these hangers on?

How To Remove A LinkedIn Contact:

1. On your home screen, select ‘Network‘ and choose ‘Contacts‘ from the drop down.


2. In the search box, type the first name of the connection you are looking to get rid of and press Enter.


3. A list of all your connections with that first name will appear. Select the person you wish to disconnect from, click the ‘More‘ option and select ‘Remove Connection‘.

See more at SocialTalent

About the Author: Siofra Pratt is a Digital Marketing Executive at Social Talent, which she originally joined as an intern in May 2013. In her current role, Siofra manages inbound marketing & content creation, social media management and advertising for Social Talent and is the voice of the Social Talent Blog.  A former banker, Siofra holds an honours degree in Commerce and an honours Masters in Creative Advertising.

Follow her on Twitter @sioffy or connect with her on LinkedIn.

How You Can Find Top Talent With Social Media Recruitment

Why you need a social media recruitment strategy and how to get started.

Computer keyboard keys displaying now hiringTo find top talent and the best fit for your company, you have to go where the best hang out. Your next great hire may be at a local job fair or on CareerBuilder.com, but social networks like Facebook and Instagram are where individuals digitally live, connect and stay informed. To reach them, you need a social media recruitment strategy. Why?

Ninety-two percent of companies recruit using social media, according to a Staff.com infographic. Alongside LinkedIn, here’s why social media networks should be recruiting mainstays.

Visual Connections & Branding

Your company doesn’t selfie! So why should it be on Instagram? Here’s why: The photo and video-sharing app has 150 million active monthly users who scroll daily through photos of their followers and post their own pictures.

Instagram shares about 55 million photos and 1.2 billion likes per day. It’s a branding platform that also creates a network of connections.  Turn Instagram users into loyal followers by attracting them with your branded photos, and you’re subsequently creating a pool of referrers and potential candidates who could provide the exact talent your company needs.

You can also use Instagram photos and videos to creatively advertise a job opportunity and give insight into your company culture through aesthetic visuals and short story-telling films. For example, create a docu-video series of “The Day In The Life Of [Your Company or Employee].” Candidates can experience who they’ll be working for and what they’ll be doing.

Out-Of-The-Box Applications

Eventually formal cover letters and pristine resumes seem to mirror one right after another for a hiring manager. Attract standout candidates by providing a unique application process that encourages innovation and creative thinking. Ask interested candidates to submit a six-second Vine video that shares:

  • Why they’d be a great fit for your company
  • What stellar qualifications and skills they can offer
  • Exceptional experience or past special projects
  • Outstanding talents and achievements

Global Recruiting Marketplace & Digital Home

Facebook is the top social networking site that connects 1 billion users worldwide. It’s a behemoth, and offers the largest opportunities for communicating with consumers in the most non-obtrusive way, according to a Leverage infographic. Aside from your website, Facebook is like your company’s digital home where consumers—or in this case, candidates—can authentically learn more about your company, from your products and services to your company mission and office culture.

Think of your profile picture as branding your Facebook page with a company logo and your cover photo as a marketing poster or pop-up banner that would be displayed at a company event. Your Facebook space is where you can promote your business and a job opportunity that can be liked, re-shared and commented on. For example, content aggregating and news delivery app Feedly recently used Facebook to promote their blog’s job post that tells its 32,000+ fans it’s hiring and looking for a content crafter to become the voice of Feedly.

Engaging Conversations

RecruitingDaily’s Carlo Leboffe recently discussed how while sourcing through social media, recruiters need to foster valuable relationships and build brand ambassadors on a foundation of trust to generate referrals. To develop this network of fans and followers, engage in conversations—in person and on Twitter.

Posting hashtags, cataloging your tweets, viewing content by topics and using Twitter’s search option can help you participate in influential, relevant conversations. HR consultant and SPHR Jessica Miller-Merrell highlights her top 10 sourcing hashtags, including #HR, #leadership, #HFChat (hire Friday), #dthr (drive-thru human resources), #diversity, and #SHRM (The Society for Human Resource Management). To engage in dialogue with more niche Twitter communities and specific audiences, include the hashtags #hirefriday, #internpro, #jobhuntchat, and #jobs plus location.

About the Author: Gary Roth runs a local job board and plans to break into the technical recruiting industry after graduate school. He is also an entertainment writer and Pinterest addict.

Monster Acquires TalentBin, Goziak; Signals Shift Towards Social

monster-worldwide-inc-logoA little over a year ago, Monster Worldwide saw its shares plummet after CEO Sal Ianuzzi admitted that he wasn’t certain when – or if – the once venerable company would find a buyer, a full quarter after retaining Stone Key Partners and Merrill Lynch to assist in its very public bid to get bought out.  

Scorned by potential suitors, the company, which quietly took itself off the auction block after failing to liquidate even its most saleable assets, seems to have completely shifted course, announcing today that it had acquired recruiting technology firms Goziak and TalentBin.  

Deals of the terms were not disclosed.  

Goziak, which was only released in beta in April 2013, offers “Google like results” for employers trying to search Twitter and other social networks, will likely be integrated with Monster’s 6Sense Semantic Search technology to include social media results when searching for candidates through their SeeMore product offering.  

With social job distribution and optimization capabilities, it is likely that Goziak will also function as an extension of Monster’s Career Ad Network, the behavioral advertising network that remains the primary legacy of its acquisition of HotJobs from Yahoo!  That deal was designed to eliminate a competitor while buying visitors from Yahoo’s powerful ad network, a three year arrangement that was a short term attempt to revive Monster’s flagging fortunes by paying for Yahoo’s career related traffic, a deal that has subsequently expired.

TalentBin, a profile aggregation tool competing in a crowded space with startups like Gild and Entelo, raised its most recent $1.2 million round of seed funding last July, and will also likely be integrated into the Seemore product suite in order to compete against Dice’s Open Web product in particular.  This is the more interesting acquisition, as their product’s UI, UX and search functionality are far superior to Dice’s offering, but the chance to have dynamic profiles and social results aggregated with Monster’s already market-leading semantic search technology has significant potential to add new value to customers while extending the shelf life and utility of the resume database which remains Monster’s biggest market asset.

In Monster’s press release, it is clear that the job board is making an attempt to pass these acquisitions off as a social recruiting play, although TalentBin is not explicitly a social media product, and Goziak really only utilizes Twitter’s API and is therefore very narrowly focused within the much larger social media landscape (and really offers no utility beyond many similar, free tools available on the market).

“The acquisition of TalentBin and Gozaik completes one key component of a larger strategy designed to help our business grow,” said Sal Iannuzzi, chairman, president and chief executive officer of Monster Worldwide. “We look forward to sharing more details about these plans at our investor briefing event later this year.”

That delay is likely due to the fact that Monster still hasn’t formulated a strategy for these acquisitions and may still be working out the details.  Here’s hoping that they learned a lesson with the disaster that was BeKnown, a Facebook recruiting application which, shortly after launch, had access to the LinkedIn API cut off, rendering the product largely unusable (they could face a similar situation with Goziak), and are able to more effectively support TalentBin than their somewhat sloppy repackaging of Trovix into 6Sense, which did not fully capture the search and stack ranking capabilities of its independent predecessor.  

One thing is clear: Monster intends to stay around for as long as possible and, after a somewhat tumultuous recent relationship with its investors, has the appetite to put their money where their mouth is.  The real question is: will employers put their money with Monster?

True Grit: Taking The True Measure of A Candidate

true gritAs an analyst, much of your week is spent in conversation: Conversations with subject matter experts, conversations with solution providers and practitioners – even conversations with yourself.

Usually these conversations provide much-needed context for trends you’re seeing in your research (for example, my forthcoming perspective on the state of talent acquisition today).

My favorite conversations, however, are the ones that stop you in your tracks, and refuse to let go of you until you’ve thought them through.

Today’s chat with my colleague David Grebow, Brandon Hall Group’s principal learning analyst, was one such conversation. We were talking about some research he’d been doing on education, and shared a TedTalk by psychologist Angela Lee Duckworth. In it, she poses the question, “What if doing well in school – and in life – depends on much more than your ability to learn quickly and easily?”

As you may know, I have a few thoughts on the standard practices employers use to gauge the quality of their applicants. Many require college degrees or “equivalent experience” for entry-level positions, which I think is preposterous. Quite the contrary, I’m of the opinion that college degrees are dime-a-dozen these days – and a poor indicator of candidate potential.

Duckworth’s extensive research proposes there may be a much better measure of viability. It wasn’t social intelligence or IQ – it was grit.

“Grit is passion and perseverance for very long-term goals,” explains Duckworth. “Grit is having stamina. Grit is sticking with your future, day in, day out – not just for the week, not just for the month, but for years – and working really hard to make that future a reality. Grit is living life like it’s a marathon, not a sprint.”

I was immediately reminded of my brother’s success. After graduating high school, he made a very modest living working as an electrician. He worked hard – harder than many college graduates I’ve known – but after nine years and a lateral move to another company, he was laid off. He took it as a sign that it was time to change careers, took a job doing inside sales at Dell, and worked as hard as he always did.

By the end of his first year, he had won numerous awards – including rookie of the year and sales rep of the year. With zero sales experience and no college degree. Did he make some mistakes along the way? Probably. Did he have the grit to overcome them? Definitely – and this brings me to my point.

One of the key findings from Brandon Hall Group’s Talent Acquisition benchmarking survey is a serious disconnect between the goals hiring organizations have set for 2014 and the processes they have in place to achieve them. Hiring better talent was the most important goal for our survey respondents by a long shot, and yet … the majority of these organizations are still beholden to traditional assessment practices with the main objective of screening applicants.

Consider this: What if the perceived shortage of talent – and even the skills gap at large – is the result of assessment malpractice? What if, by asking the wrong questions, we’re burning the chaff and the wheat? Are you measuring for grit? Do you have quantifiable measures for culture fit? Do you have qualitative measures for potential?

Your next rep of the year could very well be the underdog your recruiters would never give the time of day. He or she may be the gray squirrel that was overlooked because you’re still chasing the purple ones. If you subject them to assessment malpractice, they’re very likely to end up gathering nuts for someone else.

Assessment technology is evolving rapidly – both in talent acquisition and in talent management. If you have thoughts or questions, I invite you to reach out to me anytime.

Originally Published On Talent Acquisition Today

Kyle Lagunas-9About the Author: As the Talent Acquisition Analyst at Brandon Hall Group, Kyle Lagunas heads up research in key practices in sourcing, assessing, hiring, and onboarding – as well recruitment marketing, candidate experience, and social recruiting.

Through primary research and deep analysis, he keeps today’s business leaders in touch with important conversations and emerging trends in the rapidly changing world of talent.

Kyle has spent the last several years offering a fresh take on the role of technology as part of an integrated talent strategy, and focuses on providing actionable insights to keep leading organizations a step ahead.

Previously the HR Analyst at Software Advice, he is regular contributor on SHRM’s We Know Next and TLNT, and his work has been featured in Forbes, The New York Times, Business Insider, Information Weekly, and HRO Today.

Follow Kyle on Twitter @KyleLagunas or connect with him on LinkedIn.

 

Take the Link Bait: Yet Another Recruiting News Roundup

Hey, did you notice there were current events this week?

Turns out, people really love content themed around things like the 2014 Sochi Olympics, the Euromandan riots in the Ukraine or Jimmy Fallon’s debut as the host of the Tonight Show.

And even if they don’t, search engines do, which is really the only reason we have to write leads.

Because we’re a B2B blog and these sites get notified when we get back linked, here are the top 5 articles of the week that we can use to reinforce whatever this week’s editorial agenda happens to be to because we’re too lazy to come up with original content at the end of the week.

We’ll also tag the authors on all social media sites on the hopes that their ego will compel them to share worthless content.

5 Posts Recruiters & HR Professionals Should Get Fired for Not Reading

1. Making A Viral Video Every HR Generalist Will Want To Share: This post shows a template that somehow works to elicit an emotional response in the hearts of every SPHR.  If you want to engage an HR generalist around content that’s not an OSHA poster, make sure to check this one out.

2. What It Takes To Become An Agency Recruiter: As everyone in the human flesh trade already knows, you’ve gotta raise your chalice – and your game – if you want a spot at the Playa’s Ball. Or to make a placement.

3. The Secrets of the Most Influential HR and Recruiting Thought Leaders On Social Media: This post shows the kinds of content that have consistently worked to ensure that people who don’t really know anything about the topic on which they’re tweeting get ranked on lists generated mostly by analytics tools that only look at volume and repetition of related keywords, kind of like someone using Boolean Strings To Search.

4. The Key To Generating Great Recruiting and HR Topics For B2B Content: Have you ever wondered where marketing departments get all of their brilliant ideas?  Turns out, it’s only 99% genius and inspiration – the added secret to building an editorial calendar for blog posts like this no one reads is a tool none of them want you to know about.

5. Weekly Wrap: The Top 5 Recruiting Related Blog Posts We Were Too Lazy To Write Ourselves: The entire point of these posts is to make it look like we’re being really, really clever by building in a backlink to ourselves.  Fooled you, didn’t we?  And remember that this site is the only site you need to find news that you didn’t really care about or had already seen a few days back somewhere on LinkedIn or Twitter.

Announcing the Recruiting Service Innovation Awards (the ResSis)


The 1st Annual Recruiting Service Innovation Awards (the ReSIs)
Recognizing Innovators & Game Changers in Hiring in the New Economy

iawesThe 1st Annual Recruiting Service Innovation Awards (the ReSIs) will be presented on June 25, 2014, following the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) Annual Conference & Expo in Orlando, Florida.

The ReSIs, sponsored by Boxwood Technology and Simply Hired, are the first accolade to recognize ground-breaking sourcing and recruiting products and services that help employers “optimize their recruiters’ experience.”  Why is that important? Nan Weitzmann, Americas Talent Acquisition Leader at Hewlett Packard and a member of the ReSIs Selection Committee, explains: “The ReSIs recognize those solutions that provide a value-add to improve the recruiter experience. When recruiters are more effective and productive, the hiring process moves more quickly and enhances the overall candidate and hiring experience. “

The employment service industry was hit hard by the Great Recession.  But as the economy has strengthened, so have the companies that provide the tools recruiters use to find talent.  By the end of 2016, the employ-ment services industry is projected to grow to an annual value of $490.1 billion. (Research and Markets’ Global Human Resources Employment Services report.) This growth is being led by a surge of technological advances producing a myriad of new recruitment products and services which the ReSIs will recognize and promote.

The IAEWS, the trade organization for the global online employment services industry, has been at the forefront of product and service innovations among job boards, social media sites, aggregators, job ad distribution companies, applicant tracking system companies, recruitment advertising agencies and the vendors which work with and for them.  Collectively, IAEWS members power or operate over 60,000 sites worldwide.

Nominations for the 2014 ReSIs may be submitted any time until March 28, 2014. Awards will be presented in 5 categories

  • External Sourcing: Acquisition of candidates from outside an employer
  • Internal Sourcing: Acquisition of candidates from inside an employer
  • Screening: Evaluation of candidates
  • Candidate Management/Selection: Communication with candidates
  • Wild Card: Outside-the-box developments

A blue ribbon Selection Committee composed of HR and recruiting executives from Hewlett Packard, Hyatt, Meritage Talent Solutions, New Belgium Brewing, and Outerwall, Inc. will evaluate each nomination and select a Winner and Runner-Up in each category.

For more information on the IAEWS and the ReSIs please visit http://www.employmentwebsites.org/recruiting-innovation-awards or contact Peter Weddle, IAEWS Executive Director at [email protected] or 203.964.1888

About the IAEWS:
The International Association of Employment Web Sites is the trade organization for the global online employment services industry. Each year, the IAEWS conducts the two largest conferences of employment site executives in the world. In addition, it performs research on key trends among job seekers and recruiters, oversees an annual global benchmark survey, publishes an e-magazine for thought leaders in online recruitment, and through its Code of Ethics, promotes the highest standards of business conduct among its members. These and other initiatives reinforce a single vision that recognizes employment Web sites for what they are: the Sources of SuccessTM.  (www.EmploymentWebSites.org)

About Boxwood Technology:
Boxwood has been delivering online career center solutions exclusively to the association marketplace since 1998. As the industry leader, Boxwood has helped its clients generate over $400 million in non-dues revenue. It is also the only career center solutions provider to earn an endorsement by American Society of Association Executives every year since 2002.  (www.boxwoodtech.com)

About Simply Hired

Simply Hired ®, a technology company based in Sunnyvale, California, operates job search engines in 24 countries and 12 languages. With more than 30 million unique visitors per month, the company provides job seekers access to millions of job openings across all job categories and industries, reaching job seekers on the web, social networks, mobile devices, email, and via thousands of partner sites including LinkedIn, The Washington Post, and Bloomberg Businessweek. (www.simplyhired.com)

Picture This: Top Career Motivators For the Best of Us and the Rest of Us

What are your career motivators? LinkedIn survey and info graphic with the results of their member survey.

job searchWho needs boring book-ish data when you can get cute, colorful, cartoon data on career motivators? Behold, the rising popularity of image-infused content for the copy-averse crowd.

Depicted in this infographic are results from LinkedIn’s December 2013 survey of 18,000 employed professionals in 26 countries.

Based on the pictorial, we are initially led to believe that “around the world professionals are generally happy with their jobs.”

From a very simplistic viewpoint, LinkedIn’s graphics reveal the following about how those surveyed feel about their current jobs: 27% are very satisfied, 45% are somewhat satisfied, 14% are neither satisfied or unsatisfied, 10% are somewhat dissatisfied, and 4% are very dissatisfied.

When it comes to whether or not these professionals are satisfied enough to stay put or open to other options, LinkedIn collected the following opinions: 25% are actively looking for a new job, 45% are not actively looking, but open to hearing about other possibilities, 15% are not looking, but networking, and 15% are completely satisfied and not interested in making a move.

What is not illustrated here among the snazzy captions: specific survey questions asked, answer choices offered or anything that may have influenced survey respondents to reply the way they did. Likewise, being that this was a broad global assessment, we are not shown any economic, cultural, political or demographic indicators that may have produced outlier responses within the aggregated results.

Since we don’t have the benefit of those details from the infographic, and the full report is yet to be released, here’s how I would define those categories and the single question I would pose to survey participants…

Please select the option below that most accurately reflects your level of job satisfaction and openness to pursuing a new position.

A) I live for Monday mornings and get deeply depressed as Friday afternoon approaches. Everything about my company, boss, coworkers, schedule, compensation and commute is a dream come true. I can’t imagine anything else beyond the blissful existence I am privileged to enjoy throughout the workweek at my current job. If a recruiter dares to call me about another opportunity I immediately slam the phone down just like I do when telemarketers interrupt dinner with my family.

B) Thankfully I don’t work in an abusive and oppressive sweat shop. I haven’t noticed any signs of corporate bankruptcy on the horizon. My office building seems to be far more structurally sound than a Bangladesh apparel factory and there’s even free coffee in the break room. So far, I haven’t seen too many examples of Enron-ish ethics or Trump-esque egos running around mahogany row. Some of my coworkers are smarter than a fifth-grader and I don’t report to a pointy haired boss. My company drops a direct deposit into my bank account every two weeks so I can pay a few bills and engage in some outside interests and hobbies. All in all, perhaps I won’t thrive, but at least I’ll survive. I’m no fool and have nothing against greener grass. If I recruiter comes calling I’m up for a chat.

C) I’ve thought about leaving, boy have I thought about it! Alas, I’ve been sucking it up and sticking it out for several years since the job market remains quite unstable. Plus who has time to look for and apply for jobs? I’m not living the dream, but I’ve got bills to pay, mouths to feed, and a job is a job nowadays. My close friends and family are helping me put the feelers out, but for the most part I’m keeping it on the down low. I’ve been proactively building my network, keeping tabs on my industry’s trends, and taking calls from recruiters. When the right time comes to blow this popsicle stand, I’m ready to roll.

D) Toxic is too tame to describe the corrupt company culture. My boss is a bullying beast, my coworkers are clueless, and a post-lobotomy monkey could do my job in its sleep. Every local employment agency, staffing firm and industry recruiter within a 75 mile radius is on my speed dial. I spend every spare moment away from that hell hole known as my job, with my mistresses Monster, CareerBuilder, Indeed, SimplyHired, LinkedIn, Craigslist, Glassdoor and Bright. My resume is pimped out and I’ve mastered the art of strategically scheduled “doctor” appointments. I know all the best gas station restrooms and industrial zones to park when I need to change into my interview outfit. I’m always happy to hear from a headhunter and hope one of them enables me to shed these shackles tout de suite.

Perhaps the above evokes the type of motivators that may have been expressed by the survey takers?  

What’s shown next on the infographic is “most and least important factors to get a professionals to accept a new job.” Again without actual question format or context of available options for the replies, the information listed is subjective and limited. In most cases, there are multiple factors involved with making a significant career decision.

It’s a given that most people would not be opposed to earning more money, getting better benefits and having good work-life balance. Where it gets complicated are the very personal and individualized motivators that people may have at different points in their careers. Sometimes people don’t know how good they have it or don’t know what they are missing. So a respondent’s perspective could be skewed to priorities that wouldn’t necessarily be accurate if they were to also consider those other aspects or if the timing were different.

Moving down the chart, there’s a breakdown of differences by age and gender. While I don’t believe it’s particularly relevant to rely on such broad categories, others may appreciate these abundantly obvious revelations, including: workers at the earlier stages in their careers value things that would be expected when starting out and aspiring to move up. Professionals who are already established also prioritize things that would be important at that point in their careers.

The remaining image is a map showing “some job benefits that are important in certain countries.”  Of course, again, the macro- and micro-economic and societal inferences are lacking for this section.

Finally, LinkedIn provides some words of caution about interpreting these data. A few more cute pictures accompany the small print warning label for “what this all means for HR and talent professionals.”

Let me sum it up: please don’t count on superficial non-contextualized points of reference when assessing the overall global workforce. Please take into account uniquely personal individual motivations as opposed to assumptions based on giant demographic groups. And, please don’t jump to conclusions based on generic and generalized information portrayed in a pretty presentation.

talenttalks

About the Author: Leveraging her unique perspective as a progressive thinker with a well-rounded background from diverse corporate settings, Kelly Blokdijk advises members of the business community on targeted human resource, recruiting and organization development initiatives to enhance talent management, talent acquisition, corporate communications and employee engagement programs.

Kelly is an active HR and recruiting industry blogger and regular contributor on RecruitingBlogs.com. She also candidly shares opinions, observations and ideas as a member of RecruitingBlogs’ Editorial Advisory Board. Follow Kelly on Twitter @TalentTalks or connect with her on LinkedIn

The Gospel of Social Recruiting

A religious review on social recruiting from Matt Charney, editor of RecruitingDaily.com.

born againI’m no theologian – my apologetics tend to be limited to defending snarky blog comments – but one thing that’s always struck me as kind of odd is the striking semblance that social has kind of always had to spirituality.

I’m not talking about those who would, like the Pharisees, display their faith by live tweeting televangelists (and based on Joel Osteen’s hash tag, this actually exists).

The whole dialogue around social media in general, social media for recruiting in particular, has always had the same characteristics as a religion.

The following are, according to St. Mary’s College of Mary (a virgin so nice, they named her twice), the primary characteristics of a religion.  Although the good sisters of Mary who use this when teaching their flock little lambs might sound familiar.  According to these basic characteristics, HR bloggers seem to have discovered another holy trinity: social media, talent acquisition, and employer branding.

Pray on it, even if you’re non-denom.  And lo, it was written…

Soteriological (having to do with salvation): “Not sure that we should ever think of social media as an “invasion,” more as the potential salvation of HR.”  LinkedIn HRD: “HR Must Keep Up With Social Media Invasion,” HRMagazine.co.UK

Theological (the rationalization of belief): “Provide targeted executives with a list of potential benefits and then simply have them select the ones that (if proven) would be compelling enough to positively influence their decision … with that guidance in hand, design a process that focuses on proving only those benefits that were selected as highly compelling.” The Many Benefits of Social Network Recruiting: Making A Compelling Business Case,” Dr. John Sullivan, ERE.net

Anthropological (nature and possibilities of human being): “Ask yourself, ‘What are the obstacles keeping my employees from doing what they’re capable of doing?’   Then, go remove those obstacles.  I bet social might help.” HR Should Introduce Social Possibilities, Charlie Judy, Dice Employer Resource Center

Epistomology (“How Do We Know?”): “The results are not false perceptions.  [The survey] stated that 49% of companies who currently use social media to recruit have witnessed an increase in the quality of applications, and a whopping 43% have experienced an increase in the quality of candidates themselves.  This implies that social recruiting not only works, but it may be a more effective way to vet potential candidates for better job placement.”  Jobvite Proves That Social Recruiting Works, Kate Supino, RecruitingBlogs.com 

Ethics (relations between humans): “Relationships are still the currency that helps us find jobs … social media helps you connect with more people; social media, then, is a tool to help us connect with more people to build more relationships.” How Social Media Helps Dinosaurs To Dance, CubeRules

Temporal (having to do with the meaning of time): “Recruiters are filling openings faster by relying on new tools that scour social networks and target workers who aren’r necessarily looking for jobs.” Job Recruiters Turn To LinkedIn, Social Media Startups, Bloomberg Business Week

Cultic Practices (symbolic behavior): “Never forget to share your company culture and values, whether in a recruitment video or employee testimonials. Let potential applicants “see” inside your company and you’ll be establishing your brand identity as you attract the kind of talent your company needs.” How Social Media Can Strengthen Your Company’s Brand, Sajjad Masud, The Huffington Post

Of course, you shouldn’t take any of this as gospel, because like any religion, recruiting with social media remains largely an act of faith.  But even the most adamant of believers should follow that final major tenet of religion:

Cosmology (having to do with the meaning of the universe): As seen above, there are plenty of “gurus” and “evangelists” out there sprouting the social recruiting gospel, but we all know what happens when you drink the Kool Aid. The meaning of the world of recruiting is all about making hires (or placements) – and ultimately, if social media can’t help you do that, then your time might just be better spent waiting for a more meaningful answer to your post and prayers.

Can I get an amen?

A Numbers Game: A Corporate Recruiter’s Take on Staffing Agency Trends in 2014

2014 Staffing Agency trends from a corporate recruiter’s perspective.

Social IconBullhorn done did it again. Today, the staffing software giant released its fourth annual Recruiting Trends Report. In December 2013, Bullhorn polled 1,337 agency professionals to get a sense not only of 2013 but also what to expect in the future of staffing agency trends.

As a corporate recruiter, I’m not as up close and personal with the agency side, but I have many friends who are and the findings were not terribly surprising, confirming some of the larger staffing agency trends and themes that have long existed in third party recruiting.

Growth

repeat clientsIs the recession finally over? Does the growth in recruiting agencies finally signal that the job market is turning around? Or are we just moving the same players from one company to the next?

With 77% of respondents reporting they’ve met their revenue goals, this should be good news. After all, it tops the percentage reported for the last three years. But could it be a sign that we’re setting our goals lower? Even with revenue goals being met or even exceeded, only 23% of firms are planning on opening new offices.

Makes you wonder just how aggressive these revenue projections really are. While the most successful (per recruiter numbers) were reported by larger staffing firm, these same firms reported most of their revenue coming in from large, repeat customers. The Walmart model of recruiting? Maybe so…

While the repeat business is definitely a positive, nearly half of respondents at firms with between 26 and 74 recruiters and sales people reported getting at least 70% of their revenue from a single client. As an agency recruiter this would freak me out, not to mention what the potential for razor thin margins. Are the recruiters actually making any money for making placements?

Metrics

2014-02-18_09-55-42Let’s face it – the placement is king. None of this revenue stuff happens without placing candidates. So what does that look like?

It’s not surprising that retained executive search has the highest fill rate, while contingent the lowest.

Executive searches can go on for months, whereas contingent are often competing with other agencies or even internal recruiting efforts. If a contingent role isn’t filled quickly, it may not be filled at all.

On average, respondents are filling only 46% of the open positions they report. LESS THAN HALF.

Does this number bother anyone else? Maybe I’ve been inside too long, but I remember how tough the business development piece is. All that work to actually fill and bill less than half?

Maybe this is what success looks like, but I would have expected closer to 60-70%. This leads me back to the main question I would have as a contributor – how does this affect MY bottom line?

Candidates

2014-02-18_09-57-18All these placements being made, at all these clients? Yeah – doesn’t happen without candidates. With social media being the “next big thing” in recruiting, surely the latest shiny objects have contributed the most candidate flow, right?

Apparently not. Nearly half (49%) of placements were made with candidates straight out of the recruiters’ own databases.

Social media still had an impact, as did job boards with most large firms reporting boards to be the number one source of qualified candidates. Unfortunately, “social media” was never actually defined.

Does this include LinkedIn? Twitter? Facebook? Until there’s some sort of consensus on what social media really means, these numbers are sort of meaningless.

There were a few other areas broken down, including recruiter compensation (which seemed a little low to me, and was flat relative to years’ passed).

Also, in terms of greatest opportunity and biggest threat – social media for the opportunity win (seriously?) and lack of qualified candidates keeps us up at night.

Overall, the report was not surprising. The numbers reflect a lot of what I see and hear from my agency friends. There were definitely some unanswered questions – as I mentioned above meeting revenue goals is one thing, but knowing what the goals are based on (and improvement over previous years) could tell a completely different story.

I wasn’t as disappointed with the information as I’d expected. To be frank the lack of bullshit to blast made this post more difficult to write than I expected. That said, the information was more fluff and less substance.

I didn’t get a whole of lot insight I didn’t already have and not much in the way of trends moving forward. I guess we have to find some futurist “thought leaders” to weigh in on that.  In this industry, that shouldn’t be too tough.

For a full copy of Bullhorn’s recently released 2014 Recruiting Trends Report, click here.

amy alaAbout the Author: Amy Ala is a staffing consultant & talent sourcer for Microsoft, where she supports the hardware division as a member of Microsoft’s in-house talent acquisition team.

Amy has over a decade of recruiting experience, starting her career in agency recruiting running a desk for companies like Spherion, Act One and the Lucas Group before making the move in-house, where she has held strategic talent roles for the State of Washington’s WorkSource employment program and Zones, an IT product and services hub.

Amy is also a featured blogger on RecruitingBlogs.com and is a member of RecruitingBlogs’ Editorial Advisory Board.  Follow Amy on Twitter @AlaRecruiter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

Military Intelligence: Branching Out in Veteran Recruiting & Hiring

A soldier’s perspective on veteran recruiting and hiring based on military branch.

Harvard Business Review November 2010Back in 2010 Harvard Business Review had a special issue largely focused on things the private world could learn from the military.  One of the articles in that issue that immediately stuck with me focused on the different leadership styles that each service cultivates.

The authors of Which Of These People Is Your Future CEO? essentially separated the services into Ground Pounders (Army and Marines) and non-ground pounders (Navy and Air Force).

The article took the position that the Army and the Marine Corps cultivates a spirit of innovation, while the other two focus on standards and process.

This is true at the macro 10,000 foot level, but may not always be the case at the individual level.

In general, the ground units do rely on the concept of Commander’s Intent much more than the Air Force and Navy. For those unaware, the concept of Commander’s Intent is a general mission statement that enables lower level personnel to adjust their course of action based upon the facts on the ground, even if they are not the facts they anticipated finding. (See the two minute video below for an excellent example of Commander’s Intent).

The saying “No plan survives contact with the enemy” is certainly a bit cliche, but it’s only cliche because it’s so true. Success in combat is measured by quickly and efficiently accomplishing the mission. Individuals are trained to think about the big picture, process the reality of the situation, formulate, and then execute a plan.

Veteran Recruiting: Process vs. Personalization

On the other hand, the authors reported that vast majority of people in the other services work in very technical fields maintaining ships and aircraft. These environments stress process.  For example, if your job is to ensure a properly functioning nuclear reactor or to repair the landing gear of an F-16, your boss will not be quick to let you off the hook for “trying something new”.  In this situation, success is defined as the absence of failure. Every time.  Without exception.

Both cultures produce very fine leadership styles based on their environment, but it would be a mistake to only apply them based only upon branch of service.  The Navy also has elements such as Seals and Riverine Boat Units that operate in an expeditionary environment, for example. These units are more amenable to the commanders intent style of leadership. The same can be said for the Air Force Para-Rescuers or ground security forces.  By the same token, a zero defect mentality about safety is as critical for Marine Corps and Army aviation units as it is Navy ships and Air Force aviation.

Personally, I’ve spent nearly 20 years in the Navy, but most of that has been serving in support of the Marine Corps ground forces and I’ve been very happy in that environment. I would not say that my years with the Marine Corps is responsible for my leadership style of commanders intent, but I do think that environment allowed me to flourish the most.  In so doing I was able to exercise the traits that were most natural to me.

Despite my inclination to one style over the other, I still completely appreciate the details of a process and the need for checklists. Organizations need both innovation and standardization.  I  know myself well enough, however, to doubt I would be happy in a job that has, as its primary responsibility, the task of ensuring compliance. Emotional intelligence can be a helpful trait in the job search.

Great things happen when the right person is in the right position.  That is why it’s important that we, as veterans, understand where we best operate then seek out those positions. At every opportunity we should highlight the specific character traits in detail, otherwise we are letting the hiring manager assume we have a particular leadership style and that decision might get made based upon our status as a veteran in general, and may not be entirely accurate.

At the same time, organizations that understand that these differences are not only based on branch of service will have a leg up on finding the right person for the task.  This means digging a little deeper than the HBR article. It means getting to know the intricacies of the job descriptions within each branch. It can also mean finding an exceptional sales leader or an terrific risk  manager. Two positions that require different talents, but both of which contribute to the bottom line success of a private organization.

Hell And Back Again: Commander’s Intent In Action

The video below is an outstanding example of Commander’s Intent.  The clip features the  Battalion Commander of 2d  BN, 8th Marines (my unit) as we went into Helmand Province in 2009. I can tell you that this was certainly not the first time these Marines had heard the idea of bringing the Afghan people closer to their government.  We had spent months training for the mission and that concept was drilled into our heads.

This would be the last time Lt. Col Christian Cabaniss would physically see or speak directly to most of these individuals over the next 6 months. They would face many decisions that would need to be made on the spot, in an environment in which there was no checklist or algorithm to go by and no time to call back and get their plan approved.

Quite a lot of responsibility for a group of people, some as young as 19.  Of course, this is the kind of experience no resume can really capture.

Read More on Veteran Transition Diary

About the Author: Bob Wheeler is currently on active duty where he recruits physicians for the US Navy.  He will be retiring from the service in June of 2014 and has been blogging about his transition process at http://veterantransitiondiary.wordpress.com/. You can find Bob on LinkedIn and follow him on Twitter @sailordoc.

Sourcing Your Way To A New Job Through Social Stalking

stalkingRecruiters talk a lot about ‘candidate experience,’ but here’s a chance to actually get feedback (or at least get noticed) if you’re a job seeker.

This is a real life example, so my apologies to my target, but again, all information here is publicly available.

For this exercise, I went looking for potential examples on Twitter – and thought it might be interesting to actually feature a recruiter from Twitter itself – who, coincidentally, proves that even recruiters at social networks don’t really use them for social recruiting.

I found this tweet from @JoinTheFlock, the official career account for jobs at Twitter:

I clicked this link, which took me not to the slick, professionally polished official Twitter careers page (the kind with all the shots of multi-racial team members in cubes), but instead, to a minimally branded, bare bones page from Jobvite, Twitter’s ATS vendor of choice (which makes sense, considering they’re both tapping the same VC sources):

By using Facebook connect, I was able to easily link my account to create a Jobvite profile, and applied to the job via “Apply with LinkedIn.”  After doing so, I was sent the following e-mail:

2014-02-13_01-42-42

This is pretty standard for an ATS, but this is often the last time most job seekers actually hear anything about the position, because “your application is being reviewed” is recruiter speak for, “you’re about to get dumped into our black hole forever.”

That’s because by applying for a job, I’m an “active” candidate, and recruiters only seem to like ‘passive’ candidates, particularly ones they direct source themselves.  But it’s not really hard to turn the tables, and I’m guessing this approach is going to at least make sure if your resume, in fact, does get reviewed.  It’s way more effective than a crappy customized cover letter, in any case.

After applying, I went back to the Jobvite page, where suddenly the name of the job poster was visible (pretty cool feature, Jobvite – enforcing transparency is a good thing for candidate experience). I’m guessing this is because we share mutual connections on LinkedIn and I used their API to apply for the position: turns out the recruiter is named Jenny Vallecer (right side of the screen).

2014-02-13_01-49-27

OK, so with that name, I’m able to go over to Google and see what I can find out about Ms. Vallecer.  Here’s what showed up in my personalized search (since we’re only connected through LinkedIn at this point, these are the same as the results that return when I hide the custom search option on the main search query):

2014-02-13_01-52-18

OK, so now, not only do I have LinkedIn account, I can say with fair certainty that the “Recruiting @ Twitter” result is probably the person who’s hiring for this particular role, even if she’s not the point person for @jointheflock.  I’ll go ahead and follow her:

2014-02-13_01-55-32Thanks to Twitter’s default setting of showing people who you already follow, I have a couple potential referral connections already.  In this case, I could ask Meghan Long (who works at Twitter, too) or Samantha Zupan, who works at Glassdoor (who could probably tell me whether or not I’d be a culture fit, all things considered).  But assuming that I didn’t want to reach out to either, I’ll go the route of using LinkedIn.  Here’s Jenny Vallecer’s profile:

jenny hoSince we’re second degree connections, I could conceivably contact her directly through LinkedIn without sending an InMail:

2014-02-13_02-01-39

But rather than actually send this, let me see what else I can find out about Jenny.  In this case, I’m going to turn on one of my favorite tools, Connectifier, which is a Chrome plug in that aggregates profile results for free (it’s currently in beta, but it’s pretty bad ass).  While this shows up in either her Twitter profile or LinkedIn, unlike many profiles with richer information, neither has much additional identifying data:

2014-02-13_02-05-05

OK, time to go to Spokeo. Problem is, “Jenny” or “Jennifer” Vallecer doesn’t return any results at all, and there are hundreds of Jenny Hos in Northern California, and even those in San Mateo, where @JennyVallecer geolocated her most recent tweet, didn’t seem to match this one’s age or online profile:

2014-02-13_02-07-30

OK, striking out – and no results searching by that Twitter name or her e-mail, either, which, by checking out other connections who work at Twitter on LinkedIn (wild card searching that domain name doesn’t work like most corporate URLs), I can deduce is [email protected] since their e-mail matrix appears to be first initial, last name.  But since that’s an inexact science at best, I want to dig a little deeper.  So let’s try seeing where else her profile image from LinkedIn appears by right clicking “Search Google for this Image” in Chrome.  Here’s what that showed:

2014-02-13_02-13-04That’s not incredibly helpful, so let’s try doing that with the picture from her Twitter profile:

2014-02-13_02-14-30A little bit better, but nothing I really didn’t already know…so let’s try Facebook.  I just type in her name in the Open Graph search, and, voila, got a match although we do not actually share any friends on this network and both have private profile settings (thanks, Zuck):

2014-02-13_02-15-48

By just looking at her public posts (which are limited to profile pics and places since that’s the default security setting), I can deduce that she’s not only a UC Davis alum but posted how grateful she was to have gone there (so might want to add a “Go Aggies” to an e-mail communication) but also a 49ers fan (so maybe I’d bring up how terrible it was they lost to the Seahawks, whether or not I actually believe that).

These are the things that I promise would get a response on Twitter or LinkedIn because, well, these are the commonalities recruiters and candidates alike respond to.  Also, let’s see if searching Google for her Facebook image has any better results.  And then, boom, the new Klout suddenly shows up:

2014-02-13_02-28-31

So now I have a Quora site I didn’t have before (she follows any conversation related to In N Out, so if I were to get an interview, I know what to bring her to score brownie points) as well as an Instagram account (scandalous).  But still no phone number or personal e-mail address.  Which is OK, because while she’s not a heavy user, she does have a Google+ account, which means I could send messages directly to her GMail inbox or, alternatively, hit her up for a video hangout, which is likely way more effective than a phone number, considering that as a member of Gen Y, she’s unlikely to respond to that in the first place, and even less likely considering she’s a recruiter for a brand name company overseeing interesting roles.  But it’s a start.

2014-02-13_02-32-50

I’ll admit Jenny’s common maiden name, geographic location and limited social profiles due to both name changes and an obvious awareness and utilization of online privacy settings made her harder than most searches – and more time consuming. Pulling back open Connectifier, I’d be much more likely to ask for a referral from the person who actually runs @JointheFlock in the first place, because she doesn’t seem to have the same penchant for privacy (and sorry, Jenny, but know you started there in October according to the life event viewable on your Facebook timeline, so don’t want to call you out explicitly, but this was a live experiment.  Next time, I’m going after Jackie Xu instead:

2014-02-13_02-39-18

Bet she’ll see this post, though – and if I were truly a candidate for the position, I wouldn’t think this was creepy, since passion for and knowledge of social media were two listed requisites on the job description, right?

Thought I’d share how to show recruiters some love this Valentine’s Day – this post is for educational purposes only, by the way, so please, no subpoenas. Looking forward to learning more of this stuff next week at SourceCon.