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

An interesting blog/article by Bill Vick ” Let your dream job find you” could almost have been written by the Kangarooster team. At least the theme reaches out to the idea of candidates having to make sure that their presence is made easliy searchable and easily findable.

Interestingly enough for us, Bill quoted from an article on CNN’s digitalbiz section that was written out of their Hong Kong Bureau and featured some quotes from me - Thanks Bill.

Although the focus is on individual control of individual marketing, if the candidate begins to think this way, then what really occurs, as Marc Drees emphasises almost daily, is Relevance!

Al

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

Hi everyone.

First of all, massive congratulations to Luis and Arturo and the rest of the technical team for the Beta launch today of Kangarooster. Our baby has been in gestation for a while - but this is really the first step in delivering a truly innovative experience for the candidate. As we move forward, I am sure that our technology will power many many career sites, enhancing companies’ capability to engage directly with the IQA (interested, qualified and available) candidates.

This has led me to think about Talent Pools again. Well, actually, I recently helped out some US colleagues who are preparing a paper on the topic. What came to me was how little academic research or industry literature exists on the topic. The CIPD (Chartered Institute of Personnel Development) in the UK refers to Talent Pools only for existing employees. Most companies that think of the Talent Pool as a place for external candidate info only really have a static database.

If you want to make it a real Talent Community, then you have to engage with candidates, communicate regularly and treat them with respect. If you look at Keith’s posting over the weekend, you will see yet more evidence how little companies do understand about this aspect.

Over the next few articles, I will return to the themes of Talent Community.

Let the fun begin with Kangarooster as a starting point.

Alan

Technorati Tags: Candidate attraction, e-recruitment, kangarooster

A great survey was released this week in the UK and it backed up the results of a survey I did at Totaljobs 4 years ago. Bad recruitment practices hit a companies balance sheet.

Treat jobseekers badly and guess what; they won’t refer the job to others, they will talk badly about you as an organisation and worst of all they will be less inclined to buy your company’s products or services.

The Survey by Capital Consulting high lights that One in four jobseekers have been badly treated by a prospective employer.

• 53% of job seekers will not purchase products and services if they have been badly treated
• 55% tell at least three people about their bad experience

So you spend all that money  marketing and  building a brand, HR invest in building an employer brand and at the point of ‘purchase’ they get a poor experience.

The study by Capital Consulting indicates that companies are not handling the recruitment process as well as they could, with one in four job seekers saying they have been badly treated when applying for a job.

So what are the key results;

• 31% of people tell between three and five people about their bad experience, and 24% of people tell more than six people. A very vocal 10% tell more than ten others, and 1% will go as far as venting their spleen on the Internet by blogging about their bad experience.
• 53% of job seekers actively avoid buying products and services from a company that treats them poorly, with almost a quarter of those (23%) declaring that they will never purchase any product or service from the company again, even if it means going without.

So at a time when more businesses need to attract more talented workers than ever, companies are alienating exactly thise people they so desparately need. 

So what are the issues that upset the jobseeker:

• One in two (53%) people were aggrieved that no reason was given for not being offered the job. 
• 51%of people said the lack of feedback following an interview was their main irritation.  
• Almost half (49%) of all job seekers find the lack of acknowledgment of their application the most annoying part of the recruitment process
• 34% say they are asked irrelevant or stupid questions at interview
• 30% are asked to do irrelevant tests
• 26% of job seekers don’t like dealing with third parties and recruitment agencies – men (30%) dislike this more than women (20%)
• 32% of people say they are sent details for jobs that do not meet their skills or salary expectations.

So poor communications, poor interviewing techniques, 3rd parties and lack of relevency all seem to be key issues. Those who read our blog at Kangarooster know these issues are our passions.

So great research…but will boardrooms listen…the jury is still out.

The Rooster

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

Toen ik gisteren de nieuwe relaties van mijn relaties (bent u er nog…) in LinkedIn aan het checken was, liep ik tegen een opvallend profiel aan; dat van de vertrekkende business unit manager van de Vacaturekrant.

In zijn profiel over de Vacaturekrant heeft hij de volgende informatie staan:

Responsible for the start up of Vacaturekrant the jobboard of the largest Dutch leading and listed publisher TMG. Fastest growing jobboards in 2005 and 2006 under fierce competition. Realized a market position from nil to the incumbent number 4. With + € 1.500.000 revenue and customerbase of # 400.000 unique visitors monthly.Managed a team with a variety of disciplines ranging from marketing, business analyses, ICT and (tele) sales. Total team size 18 FTE.

Ik heb voor de zekerheid even op de site van de Vacaturekrant gekeken, maar daar wordt met geen woord gerept over omzetten, aantallen bezoekers en teamgrootte. Gezien onderstaande tekst, afkomstig van de Vacaturekrant website, lijkt TMG niet op de hoogte te zijn van de openheid van hun voormalige business unit manager:

Vacaturekrant werkt nauw samen met een aantal partners waarmee ze gezamenlijk de vacature database exploiteert. Daardoor behoort Vacaturekrant tot de top 3 van vacaturesites in Nederland.

De nummer 3 of 4, een klein maar in dit geval significant verschil! 

Ik ben ervan overtuigd dat deze informatie door de andere vacaturesites als een welkome aanvulling op hun concurrentie-informatie wordt gezien.

Ik was gisteren te gast bij de tweede rondetafel conferentie van Expand waar ik een korte lezing over online recruitment mocht geven. Deze conferentie heeft een aantrekkelijke opzet omdat na, in dit geval, een tweetal lezingen een discussie met de aanwezigen over de onderwerpen wordt gehouden.

Dit resulteerde in een levendige discussie waarbij al snel buiten de grenzen van de onderwerpen (Online recruiment en online assessment) werd getreden. Dit werd vooral veroorzaakt door het algemeen gevoelde knelpunt rondom het in contact komen met kandidaten en de daaruit voortvloeiende problemen bij het (tijdig) vervullen van vacatures.

Vrijwel iedereen deelde de mening dat door de ontwikkelingen rondom Internet het steeds moeilijker is geworden om online contact te maken met (geschikte) kandidaten; met name in een periode van krapte op de arbeidsmarkt. Daar staat tegenover dat er door de deelnemers in het algemeen nog weinig gebruik gemaakt wordt van online alternatieven voor vacaturesites, zoals social networking, actieve online recruiting buiten CV databases, etc. Ook de eigen website wordt nog niet altijd optimaal ingezet bij dit proces.

Een andere constatering was dat op dit moment via vacaturesites steeds minder kandidaten binnenkomen terwijl de prijs voor vacatureplaatsingen sterk is gestegen. De kwaliteit van kandidaten die via dit kanaal binnenkomen wordt daarbij als zeer variabel geschetst, met name doordat er geen mogelijkheden zijn om kandidaten te filteren op relevantie.

In dit kader was er wel een heel interessante constatering; kandidaten die kort voor de deadline van de vacature reageren zijn in het algemeen beter gekwalificeerd voor de functie. Deze constatering werd door een aantal van de aanwezigen onderschreven.

De reden voor dit verrassende fenomeen zou volgens één van de aanwezigen kunnen liggen in de voorbereiding die deze kandidaten steken in hun sollicitatie. Ze doen onderzoek naar het bedrijf, ze schaven aan hun reactie en CV, en reageren mede daardoor later dan overige sollicitanten.

Ik ben daarom heel benieuwd of deze ervaring wordt gedeeld en zo ja wat daarvan de redenen kunnen zijn. Reageer!

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.

Vandaag heeft John Sumser, die natuurlijk geen blog heeft maar een dagelijkse e-mail newsletter rondstuurt, een aardig stukje: What it was like.

Het doet me verrassend veel denken aan één slide van de presentatie die ik op 2 november op de ERE conferentie heb gegeven. En dan natuurlijk alleen de ouderwetse manier van solliciteren, waarbij ik beargumenteerde dat vroeger een sollicitatie een serieuze hoeveelheid werk vertegenwoordigde, terwijl dat tegenwoordig nog maar één klik hoeft te zijn.

Maar John Sumser weet er zoals altijd een intrigerend verhaal van te maken, waarbij mijn ’schrijverskwaliteiten’ zoals gebruikelijk in het niet vallen. Dus ga naar zijn website, of nog beter, abboneer je op zijn e-mail nieuwsbrief. Hoe ouderwets dit ook mag lijken…

Morgen vervolgt John zijn tweeluik (neem ik aan) met de wijze waarop banenzoekers tegenwoordig kunnen solliciteren. Blink style