Kangarooster

Hi all,

David Manaster of ERE.net (promoters of the Global Expo 2007 in Amsterdam in November) just pointed out a new video on YouTube about Blogging.

Technorati Tags: Candidate attraction, e-recruitment, ERE, kangarooster

I met with a couple of great guys last week in Holland to talk about developing some training programs for recruiters and it got me thinking. I know that is a worrying sign but it just happened. And I thought: who or what is a recruiter?

I think it is easy to understand that those working frontline in a staffing firm, recruitment consultancy or a search firm are, or can be, defined as “recruiters”. But today in the client world who or what is a recruiter?

Lets look at the internal process to identify those who recruits:

• Line Management/Department Head/Supervisor. These are the individuals who do the real recruiting in many organisations. They often have the budget to handle there own hiring needs, will contact a staffing firm and brief on their requirements/needs. They can contact a recruitment advertising agency and get the ad produced and placed. They can even handle that first phase communication with a candidate.
• HR professional. In many organisations it is an HR professional who is the first line of contact, whether it be taking a paper based CV or an electronic one, looking at candidates who have registered on-line or taking a call they interact with a potential future employee. But do they always interview the candidates? And does that make them any less a recruiter?

So these would be the traditional definitions of those who recruit. In my next series I will look at the challenges these groups have today when hiring. And I will be asking myself: are they really equipped to handle the recruiting needs of the 21st century?

I have still one bigger question when defining who or what is a recruiter. In any organisation should not everyone be a recruiter? The actions and comments of the CEO can have a greater impact on an organisation than one “rouge” hiring manager interviewing badly. A board director saying something inappropriate at a industry conference and then being quoted, can do more damage to hiring into that company than we often expect.

We live in a world of constant communication, a world where with so many channels for news or opinion the need for content is unrelenting and everything we say or do can potentially create news. With blogging we even become the creator and sometimes the news itself.

So in this environment from the top down we are all recruiters.  What we say and do impacts on the jobseekers perception of us and our organisation. Brand reputation is a word often used in Public Relations. Just put the word Recruitment in front of Brand and that is the reality we face today.

But what has all this ‘thinking’ got to do with training?

Because it is important to develop courses for those in the HR/Recruiting. But let us not forget the line managers for it is there that all the great work that happens at the attraction stage goes to waste. And lets educate senior management on the impact they can have on recruitment.

The Rooster

So in the final part of this series, where do I believe recruitment should sit in and organisation? 

For me the answer should be simple, where the organisation has significant hiring needs to justify a stand alone team, then this should report into Marketing with a strong dotted line into HR.

For a medium sized company with one recruiting professional in-house it should sit in HR with a very strong dotted line into Marketing.

With organisations without in-house recruiting professionals this function should be handled by an HR generalist and therefore left within the HR function. But ensure that this individual gets some recruitment-related training.

So why Marketing? Well, to me recruitment today is Marketing, when you look at the core attributes:

• Research consumer/jobseeker opinions of the organisation
• Identify the values, attritutes, positives, and message that reflect both reality and resonate with the audience
• Build the brand
• Identify the channel to the candidates
• Create the message and attract- reflecting both the audience and the channel/medium
• Manage the response- treat the jobseeker as if they are consumer
• Build a two way relationship with those candidates you may wish to hire in the future
• Sell- yes the interview is as much a sell as it is an interview. It is a 2-way sales process, they sell to you and you sell to them
• Close- yes again you need to close, get them to commit
• For those that don’t make it look after them, they may be a customer or future customer. Or simply remember they are people and therefore deserve your respect

So to me recruitment is about a skill and competency set that already exists in the marketing function; therefore why re-invent the wheel?

But ultimatly in an organisation there should be alignment between the Corporate goals of finding great talent and the internal key functions; HR, Marketing and Corporate Affairs.

Getting these functions working together and you can have a great recruiting team!

The Rooster

Dat was toch echt wat we, niet eens zo lang geleden, vertelden. Een marktleider geeft niets weg; geen gratis abonnementen, geen gratis proefperiode. Niks gratis want dat paste niet bij je imago als kwaliteit merk.

Wat is de wereld toch veranderd. Tegenwoordig gaat het niet meer om of je iets gratis weggeeft maar hoe je daar je business van kunt maken. Het viel me op toen ik een paar weken geleden de colum las van Thecla Schaeffer in Marketing Tribune. Zij wees op Brandchannel.com.

Daar werd de bezoekers gevraagd wat hun favoriete merken zijn. Dat werden: Google, Apple, YouTube, Wikipedia en Starbucks. Drie hiervan zijn gratis voor de consument, dezelfde drie zijn behoorlijk jonge merken.

En voor de reclamewereld op zijn minst interessant: diezelfde merken geven relatief heel weinig geld uit aan conventionele reclame. Dat geldt trouwens ook voor Apple, waar je de enorme merkbeleving kan toeschrijven aan geweldige ideeën, prachtig design en uitstekende apparatuur. En die daarnaast geen mogelijkheid onbenut laat om gelikte presentaties om te zetten in PR.

Is het dan gedaan met de reclamebranche, moeten we ons echt zorgen gaan maken. Of moeten wij ook onze business modellen veranderen. En zo ja hoe dan? Kortom, lekker wat om over na te denken.

Joel Cheesman heeft een aardig stukje over het opportunisme van bepaalde vacaturesites in Amerika.

Omdat social networks nogal een hype zijn gaan ook vacaturesites mee in de vaart der volkeren en maken een MySpace account aan. Maar wat gebeurt er dan vervolgens met zo’n account? Wordt het onderhouden, wordt actief gebruik gemaakt van de ‘mogelijkheden’ van de social network site? Niet altijd, zoals het stukje van Joel duidelijk aantoont.

Overigens wel aardig om Jobster nu als een vacaturesite te betitelen. Twee jaar geleden waren ze een referral program service, daarna een referrel program service met een vertical search (Workzoo), toen een social networking site for werkzoekers en nu een vacaturesite met een sociaal networking sausje. Je vraagt je toch oprecht af hoe een bedrijf haar strategie zo vaak kan wijzigen zonder haar geloofwaardigheid te verliezen.

In my fist blog on this subject I outlined the various options of where recruitment could sit and the questions you may wish to answer before making the decision. There where options that can be split into two alternatives: In-house versus outsourced

I do not intend to cover the outsourced option in this sequence, but together with Alan Whitford we will produce our own guide and checklist on why and how you may execute such a strategy. More on this one later.

I’m therefore assuming that the organisation wishes to keep recruitment in house. Good choice! But what questions need to be asked and answered before making this into a firm decision.

Keeping the recruitment function in-house poses the first question, where should it sit within my organisation? I believe there are three options:

• In Marketing
• In HR
• On its own

Today I will look at the first option; in Marketing. I have to admit that until recently this was my preferred option and let me explain why.

I have always believed that recruitment is treated too much like a process; automated, streamline, create efficiencies, save money. Companies trying to sell solutions to companies with in-house recruitment use these and other mantra’s to justify their own existence. Job boards talk about reducing cost and time to hire, ATS vendors talk about automation and streamlining, thus saving money. But did any of these vendors ever told you what the price tag is for a great hire? And how to achieve that goal?

Recruitment should be an experience. While preferrably a smooth process it all starts with the experience. Never, ever forget this central theme: A jobseeker is also a potential customer. Now look at how your marketing department builds a customer experience. They start with the customer: who are my customers? where are they? what do they want/need? and how can I deliver them an experience that makes them come back for more.

It is this final line that I believe has made recruitment see itself as being different. In recruitment they don’t come back for more so we don’t deliver them an experience . “We just need to get them to do what we want, given they already indicated they want to work for us”

Extreme maybe but I believe after 27 years in recruitment this is the premise on which this business is built. A non relationship building, transactional one. BUT the Internet is changing this, creating speed, demands, communities and communications  channels that mean we don’t or can’t control the candidate in the way we used.

Society is changing, we no longer have a job for life, we have multiple employers with little loyalty to any. We multi-task, multi-network, multi-communicate and we are brand conscious and we share negative experiences across a much wider network than we used to.

Recruitment will be about multi-channel attraction, no longer does and ad in a local paper, with a monopoly on the job seeking audience. We have job boards, search engines, social networks, Google Base, etc. Some paid for, some free but all with an audience. So what sites do I use, when do I place my posting by week, day or even time of day to help get a great hire and can I monitor all this?

With more ads in the market that ever before, how do I stand out? How can I gain a share of voice? How can I build a reputation and relationship with the job seeker even before I go to market? What visual, headline, words will help the attraction of the candidate. All these are classic marketing questions.

Today many organisations talk about building a “Talent pool”. In marketing speak you could call it CRM, customer relationship management but change customer to candidate and yes, another tool in the marketing portfolio that fits the new world of recruitment.

So Marketing has experience in; attraction. media planning, branding, CRM, viral marketing, site building and very importantly they monitor all activity with a tight ROI.

BUT for all of this it is not clear cut and the next in this series covers why

Hi

More predictions.

Simon Meth, an Aussie living in the US, has his predictions for 2007 - plus an interesting analysis of the ‘Gen Y’ candidates - the ones that should be driving us all crazy with their demands for top tech tools and lots and lots of free time or work life balance. Speaking of that, some interesting discussions recently about candidates wanting specific time to be able to IM while at work - seems to me that harkens back to when employers used to be concerned about employees spending too much time on the phone with friends, family, making dinner reservations etc.

For a recruiter guru who has a wide ranging offering of US oriented blogging rants and raves, visit Jim Stroud - lots of useful downloads, including this link to the top 500 companies in the Netherlands.

Tony Lee, former WSJ guru and now a chief strategist at Adicio, chaired a panel of luminaries at the fall Kennedy conference. See the predictions here.

Best regards

Alan

Technorati Tags: Candidate attraction, e-recruitment, kangarooster, online matching

Het concept employer branding bestaat al tientallen jaren. Toch realiseren nog steesd veel organisaties zich nauwlijks het belang van een sterk werkgeversmerk. Ik vrees dat zij daar uiteindelijk een hoge prijs voor gaan betalen. Waarom? Omdat waarde niet gecreeërd wordt door organisaties, maar door het talent wat er werkt. Zorgen voor een juiste instroom van mensen én vasthouden van toptalent is een onderdeel van business strategie. In de wereld van nu worden diensten en ideeën belangrijker ten opzichte van producten en marges. Het aantrekkelijk maken van een organisatie voor talent is ineens weer actueel. De vraag naar mensen neemt toe, het aanbod van talent af, de concurrentie harder.

Employer branding is complex. Huidige generaties zijn opgegroeid met veel massa media. Wij zijn meer merk-georienteerd geworden: het verband tussen een positieve perceptie van een werkgever en het verlangen er te werken is wetenschappelijk aangetoond. Werken is een groter deel van onze identiteit geworden; werkgevers worden kritisch bekeken. Een werkgeversmerk raakt de organisatie diep: wie zijn wij?, waar staan wij voor?, waar willen we naar toe? De uitkomst van een recente studie van The Economist verbaasd mij niets: organisaties worstelen met employer branding.

Een worsteling die je moet winnen. Organisaties met een slecht gedefinieerd of helemaal geen werkgeversmerk doen het op veel fronten minder. Zij weten minder mensen te binden, minder of geen zingeving in het werk te stoppen, hebben in de buitenwereld verkeerde percepties en scoren lager in consumenten onderzoeken. Zelfs financiële prestaties liggen uiteindelijk lager.

Om toptalent binnen te houden, en nieuw talent binnen te halen, moet je weten waar de organisatie voor staat. Enkele stappen:

Stap 1. Ga op zoek naar wie je bent en wat je uniek maakt.
Een propositie is een belofte die je waar moet kunnen maken. Deze moet dus authentiek zijn.

Stap 2. Ga op zoek naar de perceptie van targetgroepen.
Weet wat men van je vind. Hoe wordt de organisatie gezien? En hoe verhoud dit zich tot je propositie. Het gat ertussen dichten is onderdeel van de strategie.

Stap 3. Ga op zoek naar een werkgeverspositionering.
Hoe zet je wat je uniek maakt eigenlijk in het licht? En hoe verhoud zich dat tot behoeften van doelgroepen? Een positionering is het samenkomen van authentieke organisatiewaarden en behoeften van doelgroepen.

Sap 5. Ga op zoek naar de match
Werk in communicatie altijd naar de ruilrelatie tussen potentiële kandidaat en organisatie toe. Zorg voor de instroom van juist talent. Daar staat tegenover dat elke kandidaat van zijn kant weer zal zoeken naar het antwoord op zijn vraag ‘what’s in it for me?’

Stap 6. Ga op zoek naar hoe je doet wat je belooft
On brand behaviour! Gedraag je naar je propositie, want arbeidsmarktcommunicatie is vooral een ervaring; een ervaring die niet alleen in de buitenwereld moet plaatsvinden. Om talent vast te houden, te ontwikkelen of als ambassadeur van de organisatie uit te laten stromen moet je net zo branden als bij de werving van nieuw talent. Gedrag is een krachtige beinvloeder.

Stap 7. Ga op zoek naar passende, slimme en opvallende communicatie.
Communicatie die past bij de propositie en doelgroepenbehoeften, die raakt waar het moet raken: buik, hart en hoofd. Communicatie die opvalt en die werft over kanalen die slim en meetbaar zijn.

Greo Belgers, STEAM
Creative director strategy

As individuals we are consumers of products and services from companies large and small. As employement consumers we ’consume’ a range of employment products and services within companies large and small, from recruitment to retention to exit.

Now, just suppose I’m the Chief Marketing Officer of a large corporation and I come before my Board of Directors to inform them that 94% of all visitors (potential consumers) to our website that expressed an interest will never hear from us. Well, I suspect that I would be forced to develop my career externally.

Yet when I would be an applicant responding to a job posted online there is a 94% chance of never receiving a response!

There are those who argue that this is normal practice. Why should we respond to all who apply to our jobs, we didn’t respond to everybody in the good old days of print. While this argument doesn’t show any respect towards the applicants it is true. However, on the Internet every recruitment ad potentially attracts a much wider audience than ever before and there is no way to control the size of that audience.

And on the Internet the brand is often defined by the experience, and recruitment is therefore part of the brand experience. EuroRSCG/Engage, a new UK based HR communications and technology business, has researched “How Jobseeker’s Expect to be Treated”. The results where obvious: show me respect, keep me informed.

Far more important: 80% of respondents also expect to receive the same treatment from companies as a jobseeker as when they are a consumer. This means that “consumer” experiences have a big impact on the anticipated jobseeker experience.

Bottom line: In a world were the company brand is now defined by the experience, marketing departments should care a lot more about what there colleagues in HR are doing

So after years and years of being told, bullied and on occasion even blackmailed by my peers to get of my finger out and write some thing, I have finally got my blog up. I have finally arrived, better late than never. Hm

Last week in Amsterdam I was involved with 2 events; the ERE Global Conference and the launch on Thursday of my new venture, Kangarooster.com. A busy week…

By the way, the title of this blog comes from a great track by a late 60’s psychedelic funk outfit called the Chamber Brothers. This is a warning because those who read this blog in the future should understand that whilst I am passionate about recruitment which I have been in for 27 years, my love is music and therefore regular references to bands, gigs and songs can be expected.

The ERE event was great, over 140 delegates and double last years event. A big thanks to David Manaster and the team for supporting Alan Whitford and myself in putting the event on. A big risk but one which we all believe has paid and will pay off.

Next years event is already being planned and we will let you all know when and where soon.

So for those who won’t be at the conference which is kinda most of the world I will  post a link to my presentation. The theme, hm Cathedrals to hope….we went to the Cathedral in the Middle Ages to find hope, today we create new Cathedrals to give people hope… the Moscow Metro and Grand Central both give an experience to millions who travel through to and from work.

In Moscow’s case it was a way to highlight the glories of the revolution but also to offer the workers of Moscow a glimpse of a better future.  The shopping mall is hope to millions every day and we want and get immediate gratification.

So I my view a new Cathedral to hope is the jobboard!! Yes I know I’m pushing it BUT every day millions of people go to jobboards seeking and for many seeking in hope. They find hope, a job, and they seek immediate gratification through the “promiscuous digit” every recruiters nightmare… The WHAT? I hear you ask.

Well, the “promiscuous digit is the finger that hovers over the mouse and hits Apply whenever a job appears. Before even reading the job offer, before deciding if they are suitable or not. The application is gone, and the recruiter is confronted with CV spam.

Those who seek then see their CV go into the virtual world never to hear a word again, so they apply again and again hear nothing. Today this happens to millions who seek hope and they continue to apply and seek because it is easy and we never create the time for them to think “am I really right for this?”.

Recent research in the US from John Younger at Accolo indicated that up to 94% of those applying electronically never get response. Other research from Gerry Chrispin at CareerXroads has put the figure at 50% plus.  Whatever the figure, it is too high. Respect, dignity and common sense should tell us this.

One more thought of which more in my next blog. Every jobseeker is a consumer and every consumer is a jobseeker. Those you ignore as a jobseeker today may not buy your product or service tomorrow.

MORE OF THE IMPACT NEXT.