LG & Associates Search / Talent Strategy

Fellow Recruiters: Beware the Twitter Trap

Twitter and Micro-blogging is all the hype today in the social networking (particularly the Recruiting/Talent Acquisition community).  Why?  Well, it's cool . . . it's new . . . it's widely publicized . . . it's a way of staying in touch . . . from a marketer's viewpoint, it's a way to maintain mindshare and/or top-of-mind placement.  The notion of a multi-drip is indeed being redefined by Web 2.0.

There's only one problem - I don't see any discretion among many Recruiters using it.  Here's what I mean: Candidates that we're working on building a relationship with are looking for us to help them make the next move (well, quantum leap for many!) of their career.  To be succinct, they (much like us) have a vested interest.

Why does this matter?  Well, unless our candidates are part of our family or are friends, they don't care that we're . . .

"On a rollercoaster about to heave", "Eating a calzone at Johnny's", or "Thinking about Darwin's work, "Evolution of a Species", etc.

In fact, I ask myself how letting the entire wall down between our work and business lives affects our candidates' perceptions of us as professionals.  Yes, we want to build a relationship, but that doesn't mean we open our entire personal lives up to the candidate pool.  In fact, this is what I call the Twitter Trap.

So I've identified the problem . . . Here's a solution -- Create a Twitter account dedicated to the candidate niche(s) you specialize within.  A hypothetical example might be twitter.com/SAPFinanceAtlanta.  From this angle, you can enhance the value you're providing to your candidates without having to open the door to your personal life; a personal life that the candidate probably isn't interested in (yes, it's a tough anti-narcissistic pill to swallow, I admit.)

What might that value look like among the allotted 140 characters?  Perhaps a link to a relevant blog, perhaps a new position you're working on for a client, perhaps news releases that they may find interesting, etc.  Think about it for a minute: Imagine how this type of communication would come across to candidates instead of what we normally see . . . If your bread and butter is placing top talent, don't you think they may be creating perceptions about your talent level as well?

Put these tips to work and watch your network begin to grow for the right reasons with the right results you're looking for (more hires, more placements, less time-to-fill, higher quality-of-hire, etc.)

Good luck!

LG & Assoc's Letourneau Announces New Series Over at FastCompany.com: The New Rules of Getting The Job ("Rules, What Rules?")

Over the next few days, LG & Associates co-founder Joshua Letourneau will be launching a series on today's new rules of getting the job ("Rules, What Rules?".  We'll be copying/posting here as well, but invite you to check out the series at FastCompany.com's Careers subsite - if you're not a member, what are you waiting for already?

Dear Job Hunters: 

Remember all the rules you were taught about how to find a new job? (sorry, I meant "an exciting new opportunity"!)  Well, "Lies, they're all lies".  Well, that's not saying we were necessarily lied to . . . so let's term them 'soundbites of yesteryear's thinking'.  The problem is that yesterday's strategies barely worked yesterday, let alone today!

C'mon, you know the rules I'm talking about - apply online with a targeted resume that has every keyword under the sun in it, send a knockout cover letter, "smile, but don't look the interviewer in the eye for more than 2 seconds", dress conservatively for the interview, send a "thank you" letter, etc.  Think about it for a minute: Each time a candidate turns around, they see an article or a blog post (or overhear a conversation at a coffee shop) suggesting how to play the job-hunting game.

Well, I don't know how to tell you this, so I'll just say it: Rules aren't your friends.  Rules exist to keep you out of consideration.  Rules make it easier for lazy recruiters to stay lazy.  Luckily, rules are meant to be broken . . . that is, considering you're actually looking for results.

Here's a hint: If you walk up to a tree with a sleeping monkey in it, you probably aren't going to wake him up by calling his name, offering him a fruit, or tossing little pebbles at him.  You have to shake the tree - and I don't mean just push on it a little bit . . . I mean shake that sucker!

So today, I'm looking at a few different alternatives - I might make some podcasts and/or video as text is old news . . . but I'm going to feature it right here Fast Company.

After all, Fast Company is all about "Where Ideas and People Meet" . . . so I want all of my fellow FC fanatics to have first exposure to the ideas that win in today's game of job hunting!

Stay posted, Fellow FC Members: Same Bat-Time, Same Bat-Channel.

Yours in Breaking the Rules,

Joshua Letourneau
Managing Director, LG & Assoc Search / Talent Strategy
BLOG: www.lgexec.typepad.com
email: jletourneau(at)lgexec.com

Facebook 'Personas' For Sale.?. - Yes, It's Official

Yep, it's now official. There is a PR Firm out there now selling 10 Facebook 'Personas' on eBay and the bidding ends Saturday, 6/14 at 13:35:29 PDT. Now, if any of you have been following my random rants about the intersection between market psychology (in our case 'talent market psychology') and social media, you'll know I'm not very surprised about this. As I've tossed out there before, the future of strategic talent sourcing (Sourcing 2.0) is less about the Who/Where/What and more about the 'Why'. The 'Why' someone buys a product, service, or the reason they buy the particular role (or to some, employment brand) we're selling as recruiters is more important than anything else . . . another way of saying this is that the 'Who/What/Where' emanate from the 'Why'. If you ask me, I'd even argue that uncovering the 'Why' is what makes a great recruiter.

Getting back on point, here are some excerpts from the eBay auction page:

"I will briefly mention the manner in which I compiled a list of genuine friends for each persona.

Step 1: Develop a persona with an intense interest on specific subjects/topics
Step 2: Integrate that individual into communities/forums based on their interests
Step 3: Stimulate conversation inside communities/forums and interact with other users
Step 4: Establish the persona inside the communities/forums
Step 5: Begin to add friends organically"

"The ten profiles I have are as follows, and can be sold separately if requested:

- Samantha (age 19) – loves music, makes art, and enjoys the outdoors
- John (age 35) – health purist, into yoga, active runner, amateur cyclists, and into healthy eating.
- David (age 23) – Computer programmer, big gamer, into the latest gadgets, and is a blogger
- Michael (age 42) – Intellectual, reads books, enjoys poetry, has a weakness for fast food, and loves his two kids
- Carrie (age 26) – Fashionista, craves gossip magazines, doodles potential outfits, and follows celebrity developments
- Erik (age 29) – Big beer drinker, watches a ton of sports, likes sports cars, and likes to cook
- Holly (age 18) – Big into volunteering, loves reading, loves school, and interested in travelling abroad
- Peter (age 19) – Athlete, big into college life, likes drama and mystery movies, and can’t live without mac and cheese
- Shannon (age 33) – Design aficionado, into exploring a city’s culture, active artist, and
is latched onto her iPhone
- Kristin (age 40) – Live at home mom, loves cooking for her family, wishes she had a new car, wants a vacation to the beach, and is really into gardening"

"Under the right conditions and for a fair price you will receive full control of these personas, as well as associated emails."

Come to think about it, isn't this (in a roundabout way) what unscrupulous recruiters do when they market a fake candidate with a fake resume into clients with the hopes of achieving a job order or search agreement? Hmmmmm.

Yes, it's becoming a crazy social media maze out there :)

Joshua Letourneau
Mg Director
LG & Associates Search / Talent Strategy
BLOG: www.lgexec.typepad.com

"The Web Is In The Process Of Becoming A Video Medium" . . .

In reading a FastCompany.com comment by Saabira Chaudhuri today, I was stunned by the clarity of the following statement made by Walt Mossberg of the WSJ:

"The Web is in the process of becoming a video medium."

Savvy candidates and employers today are embracing Facebook, Twitter, and the usage of video by REAL employees to create demand for the employment and candidate brand.

The game is changing, so keep both eyes open on how the intersection between talent acquisition and video play out . . .

Random Recruiting Thoughts on Opt-Out Marketing, Viral Loops, a Modern-Day Consilience, and a Readiness for Growth

If I may play 'Mr. Marketing Devil's Advocate' for a moment, let me interject one of the new rules of marketing that exist within today's intersection of a globalizing economy and the viral expansion of social media:

***Drop any opt-out marketing efforts like a bad habit.***

Opt out = spam. In the words of my friend, Seth Godin, "Opt-out takes advantage of laziness, inertia, and infoglut to inundate people with stuff they don't want." There are more innovative ways than I can count on one hand for you or your firm to capture the candidate pool's attention in a meaningful way. Perhaps it's twittering highly relevant news or 'blog picks of the day' . . . or creating a viral loop/network through a targeted Ning group . . . or any other information that allows you to develop not only respect, but the 2-way dialogue that has gone forgotten in our world (i.e. we're still sucked into the CRM promise that didn't work for the Mktg & Sales function several years ago, and still has yet to yield positive ROI/EVA!)

Since I entered the Talent Acquisition world, I've been saying all along that this industry is literally dying for marketing minds. Among every business unit, we (meaning as recruiters and talent acquisition professionals) have more 'customer data' than any other . . . yet we do little to leverage it. The marketing function would salivate to have as much data and trend information as we have - in fact, they pay a hefty penny for it under the guise of '3rd party market research.' The beautiful thing here is that you don't need 10 - 20 yrs marketing experience to be great . . . you just need the desire to embrace and get to know your customer/candidate segments better. Passion and curiosity are the keys.

In the form of a shameless plug, it's the reason that magazine editors have started contacting me regarding some of my blog posts . . . while the same information falls on what can be termed 'deaf ears' in our space. That is, by no means, an indictment of any sort on Recruiting and TA; all it means or shows is that we're not ready yet . . .

We're not ready to step up our game and get off the boards, or stop mass spamming, or stop thinking that quantity of names has anything to do with QOH outcomes, or stop treating all candidate segments the same. But the time will come . . . and when it does, we'll see a modern-day Rennaissance (or better, Consilience) in our Talent Acquisition world.

Consilience: The joining together of knowledge and information across disciplines to create a unified framework of understanding.

Joshua Letourneau
Mg Director, SSF (Strategic Sourcing Framework) Implementation
LG & Assoc Search / Talent Strategy
BLOG: www.lgexec.typepad.com

Talent Acquisition Bubbles Act As Non-Permeable Membranes When It Comes To Diversity of Thought

In a somewhat interesting conversation on ERE, I've observed a trend in response to a Talent Acquisition Director seeking information on how to implement a Sourcing Process into the current mix. Fellow TA Directors seem to be extremely guarded against any non-TA thought processes or insights from 'outside-the-bubble' per se. Being a vendor in the space is met with near-immediate disqualification, which is greatly unfortunate, however not for the reasons that might immediately meet the eye.
For a disclaimer, trust me that I understand the guarding against being continuously sold. It's the same exact scenario for me as well. Every time I turn around, there's a new product, service, or solution being presented to me.

Personally, I would encourage Directors of Talent Acquisition to be careful of the exact opposite. I wrote a blog post the other day about "Blindly Worshipping At The Altar of Best Practices", and I would caution Talent Acquisition professionals against doing so.

We are in the early throws of a function that does not (yes, does not) have a seat at the executive table for a number of reasons. One of them is because there is a bias that the best and brightest do not man the TA or HR function. A portion of that stigma is due to TA professionals blindly following the 'best practice' or fad of the day, not because it stands to enhance overall organizational performance, but because it stands to improve otherwise myopic objectives (i.e. those specific to departmental performance only).

A perfect example is an overview of the demand that exists in our space for circa-1930 marketing solutions and 1950s Henry Ford assembly-line recruiting process improvement. Despite having more information about our customer segments (candidate pools, if you will) than any other business function (yes, including marketing), we continue to operate with outdated and archaic philosophies.

There is a great deal to be learned from great business minds outside solely the HR and TA functions. I would encourage all of us to read more of Malcom Gladwell, Tom Peters, Peter Drucker, Seth Godin, or anyone else that piques your curiosity.

I know some former CEOs of F500 companies and current VPs of Marketing that would absolutely blow us away with their 'outside-the-bubble' insights and observations. Please, please, keep an open mind and don't put up immediate blinders because the point of view or paradigm isn't directly from someone in HR, Talent Acquisition, or Organizational Development. Again, please keep an open mind - it's the only way to leapfrogging our current state of growing innefficiencies. We're smarter than Upper Mgmt gives us credit for . . . but it all starts with us recognizing and embracing that fact.

"Business is War"??? - Beware the Pyrrhic Victory (and Some Other Observations On Our Industry)

In doing my morning cup-of-coffee rounds through some sites and blogs I greatly respect, I came across the following HBR article by by Deepak Malhotra, Gillian Ku, and J. Keith Murnighan:

"When Winning Is Everything"

How many times do we hear the age-old mantra, 'Business is War'?  Think about that - we hear it almost all the time. It's the mindset that dominated American thinking throughout the Industrial Revolution. And if you listen closely, you'll hear this mantra among a large set of Baby Boomers in our society. As a former Marine, I can remember times where the mindset was that you were un-patriotic if you didn't want to destroy a competitor. 9/11 has changed some of these preexisting mentalities (as well as our current foreign policy), however I am always surprised to not see the same enlightenment within our industry . . .

For example, consider the following in the Talent Acquisition world - yes, Exec Recruiters should pose to maintain control, but the notion of 'control' can be a misleading one. There is more than one way to maintain control, perhaps without anyone even noticing that you do, in fact, have control. The notion of control in our industry has been permeated in such a way as to further create an "us vs. them" mentality between TPRs and HR. It's as if control is a struggle in which you either 'win' or 'lose', on or off, black or white, 0 or 1 . . .

But does this mindset serve us in a globalizing, less compartmentalized economy? No, not at all. Cirque du Soleil didn't come into existence because the founder wanted to crush the Movie Theater industry, the Traveling Circus industry, or Broadway musicals . . . the goal was to innovate in a manner that would create a new experience that would emphatically delight customers. They didn't start out by saying, "Let's crush Barnum & Bailey"! Rather, they started out with a clean slate (a blank page, if you will), and today, they rank as #22 on Interbrand's poll of brand names with the highest global impact. Also consider the evolution of the iPod (and now, iPhone). Did Apple start out by wanting to crush RIM? No, they started out by innovating outside the current set of perceived market parameters. That's what I call winning.

On my side of the fence, I run into industry professionals that think you can only exist in one of a few very narrow categories as a vendor: RPO, Contract Recruitment, or Executive Search. In attempting to innovate the model and drive better client results, we often hit a wall because we don't fit into the nice little box (or ladder) of all the other commodity vendors competing solely on price in our industry (Telephone Name Generation companies, ATS companies, Internet Research companies, etc.)

You see, 'winning' is not always about destroying the competition in a very narrow niche . . . not if you want to sustain for the long haul. The age-old "Business is War" mentality helps companies focus and perhaps win in the short term, but a Pyrrhic victory is worth nothing, especially to shareholders and investors. In our new global economy, strategic alliances and true partnerships that aim to deliver amazing value propositions are the road to winning in every sense of the word.

Sourcing 1.0 vs. Agent Orange: "Be Prepared to Re-Examine Your Reasoning"

In a riveting excerpt from "The Fog of War", the U.S. Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War, Robert McNamara, offers the following advice:

"Be prepared to re-examine your reasoning."

I often say the same to organizations looking to re-architect their recruiting model/function . . . or to those who have attempted to shift their model and have little to no results to show for it.

Agent Orange was deployed to remove foilage from trees in an effort to better identify the NVA and Viet Cong - in essence, however, they weren't hiding in or under the trees . . . they were hiding under the ground.

The corollary is that recruitment models have shifted to accomodate Sourcing 1.0 (Sourcing as Name-Generation Assembly-Lines), however the coinciding effect has been greater fallouts, no increase in QOH or decrease in QOH, in addition to less relationship-building (i.e. "candidate development").

Sourcing 1.0 is, in my best estimation, the following in military terms:

"Good initiative.  Bad judgment."

Talent Acquisition Professionals: Operational Innovation and Process Improvement Are 2 Different Things

Today's HBR Brief, "Deep Change: How Operational Innovation Can Transform Your Company" offers some extremely relevant tips for the Talent Acquisition function today.  The important thing to take away here is that Operational Innovation is NOT Process Improvement.  For some reason, practitioners in our industry shun process innovation in lieu of applying Six Sigma and/or LEAN methodologies to already broken processes!  Here are some tips that make great brainstorming food for progressive Recruiting Leaders out there:

Make the Special Case the Norm

Companies often achieve extraordinary levels of performance under extraordinary conditions. The trick is to turn your do-or-die mode into everyday practice.

Example: A packaged-goods maker had relied on sales forecasts for production scheduling. When demand for a new product wildly exceeded predictions, it created an ad hoc process to give real-time demand information to manufacturing, which made production planning and distribution more efficient. After the crisis passed, the company made its emergency mode standard. Customers were delighted, and overall costs dropped dramatically.

Talent Acquisition Take: There are a number of TA applications here, so I'll keep this short and throw only 1 out there -- Leading Indicators throughout the recruiting process.  Is it possible?  You bet.

Rethink Critical Dimensions of Work

Experiment with changing one or more of these elements in your own operations:

What results are to be produced, who should perform the necessary activities, where should they be performed, in what sequence, and how thoroughly each activity must be performed.

In 2002, Shell Lubricants reconsidered who needed to participate in its order fulfillment process. By replacing a group of seven people who each handled different parts of the order with one person who does it all, Shell cut cycle time by 75%, reduced operating expenses by 45%, and boosted customer satisfaction by 105%.

Talent Acquisition Take: Here's a perfect example of today's notion of Sourcing 1.0 not working.  What happened?  Well, the company cut the process down from an assembly line to a more streamlined fashion.  Can this happen in TA?  Sure it can.  Am I saying to revert back to just 1 person handling the whole process (the 'Full Lifecycle Recruiter')?  No . . . but having 5 different people handling the recruiting process like an assembly line (Sourcing 1.0) isn't the answer either.  The balance is likely in the middle, swinging to the left or right depending on your own organization.

Talent Acquisition Professionals: Are You Blindly Worshiping at the Altar of Best Practices?

In an interesting article from Scott Anthony today, "When Are "Best Practices" Not Best Practices?", he touches upon an issue we so often see in the Talent Aquisition universe:

Blindly Worshipping At The Altar of Best Practices

Sound familiar?  As Scott puts it, "The theory is that the manager should find a successful company, find out what practices have made them successful, mimic those practices, and expect success."  But does that work in our space?  Do the same principles that make one recruitment function effective work as well in another environment?

Well, if you think the answer is yes . . . you're mistaken.  I still hear companies asking for better ways to find more names, when the actual desired outcome is increased organizational performance.  Scott concludes with some great advice that should be well-heeded in our space:

"Before blindly copying a competitor’s best practice, or assuming a historic best practice will continue to provide positive results, ask three questions:

• Are market circumstances similar?
• Are corporate contexts similar?
• Is the practice “modular,” with few interactions with other corporate systems?

If the answers to these questions are yes, then mimicking best practice can succeed. If the answer to any of these questions are no, think twice. Following so-called best practice might lead to disappointing results."