director of recruiting

More (sensible) lawyers respond to video resumes

Over on the Law.com blog network - have we discovered a parallel universe that is also overrun by blogs? - Carolyn Elefant makes some sensible arguments about video resumes in response to my earlier post on the subject. That's right - a lawyer. Making sense. About a topic that could have billable hours attached to it.

Kidding aside, the crux of Carolyn's argument is really the ultimate irony of the story. Lawyers represent the one profession that may have the most to gain from video resumes. What better way to understand a lawyer's ability to stand in front of a jury of their peers than to see them on video? What better way for one legal student among thousands to stand out from the crowd? For lawyers, video beats a resume any day of the week.

But if you are a lawyer looking to build a video resume - for the sake of your own dignity - please do NOT end it with: "Ladies and gentleman of the jury, I am the person you should hire." or "Interview closed."

Friday funny

You might have seen Microsoft's commercial for Microsoft Surface, a really fascinating approach to computing that might actually usher in a new generation of computer-enabled devices and interactions.

Of course, you can't do anything innovative without an army of critics and sarcastic responses hitting the web. Here's the best one I've seen - very funny stuff.

New technology alert: itzbig

Yesterday marked the launch of itzbig, which describes themselves as "the first dynamic, interactive sourcing network for connecting recruiters to the candidates that don't seek out positions on job boards."

What it is: A next generation job board that has the potential to appeal to a broader range of active and passive candidates.

How it works: Built on a structured data platform, the itzbig team - many of them Hire.com veterans - seeks to solve a fundamental challenge in the talent acquisition space: recruiters and candidates passing each other like ships in a sea of undifferentiated and poorly described job descriptions, misleading resumes, and unqualified applicants.

They use what they call "progressive profiling" and candidate feedback mechanisms to capture the types of people that other job boards can't - in other words, the profiling process is divided into bite size chunks and delivers value to candidates as they go along, while ensuring that they can engage in an ongoing job search without sacrificing their privacy. All of this is tied together with a real-time element, i.e. alerts when candidates you have your eye on change status and when jobs you're interested in and qualified for become available.

What I think: In a lot of ways, itzbig is like a recruiter-ized version of Google, trying to solve the same set of challenges that Google sought to solve when they launched their search engine and contextual advertising system: relevance.

Today, candidates get too many irrelevant jobs when they search and employers get too many irrelevant candidates applying to their jobs. The idea that a site like itzbig would use structured, recruiter-friendly data to only serve up jobs for which candidates are qualified for might be the biggest revelation here. The end result could be that recruiters only see qualified candidates and candidates only see the jobs that they would really be considered for - a win for everyone.

A few weeks ago, I spent some time with the itzbig team in Austin, TX. I was impressed with their knowledge of the recruiting space - they have a level of domain expertise that few new entrants to the space have - and that they're laser focused on solving the right set of problems. They're also taking a "start small" approach in order to build success and expand out - which I think is the right way to go. They'll be starting in TX first - if you're hiring there for tech talent there, be sure to take a look.

Me on CNBC

I was recently interviewed for a Wall Street Journal article on recruiting in Second Life. This led to a subsequent interview on CNBC's On the Money last week, which you can view here:

What the lawyers think of video resumes

While we've been sitting in our own little industry closet talking to ourselves about video resumes, the legal community has been doing the same. And (surprise), their opinion of it isn't quite so favorable.

Once again not understanding how recruiters find candidates these days and not distinguishing between video resumes and video interviews, they've essentially told companies to close their eyes and not watch videos of candidates at all. From a recent National Law Journal:

If a video résumé comes across your computer, hit the delete button. That's the advice labor and employment attorneys are giving employers and human resources professionals about video résumés, the latest job-searching trend that has employers nationwide both intrigued — and scratching their heads. But lawyers are warning employers that video résumés can open a slew of discrimination claims.

"Just don't even deal with them," said Dennis Brown, an attorney in the San Jose, Calif., office of Littler Mendelson whose firm recently advised employers about the dangers of video résumés at a seminar. "My advice to my clients who have asked me about video résumés — and I have had a lot of clients ask lately — is do not accept, do not review video résumés."

Brown's main concern with video résumés is that they reveal information about a person's race, sex, disability, age — all details that could wind up in a discrimination lawsuit. He believes that employers should stick to the old-fashioned paper résumés and avoid the potential legal hassles of video résumés, which he called "an outgrowth of the reality television craze."

The legal community really hasn't done their due diligence here. First off, you can't hit the delete button on a website... because there isn't one. Because of YouTube's and other sites' embedded video technologies, videos will soon become indistinguishable from the sites themselves, making video resume content nearly impossible to avoid.

In addition, you might as well insert the phrase "in-person interview" into the last paragraph above, i.e. "Brown's main concern about (in-person interviews) are that they reveal information about a person's race, sex, disability, age — all details that could wind up in a discrimination lawsuit." Perhaps employers should stick to phone interviews and avoid the legal hassles of meeting someone in person? Rather than try to understand the ways that video resumes and interviews can be used for good, the legal beagles seem to want to spread fear among their customers that it's going to cause a new wave of discrimination and lawsuits.

This week's sign of the apocalypse: claytronics

We've all heard about video interviews, virtual job fairs, video conferencing and the like. Now imagine another form of virtual interview, one in which you aren't really there, but there's a very scary looking clay replica of you interacting with and shaking hands with your interviewer. That's the living nightmare that "claytronics" may one day bring us.

According to the New Scientist:

The project is still in its infancy, but the researchers hope the new material - made of self-organising nano-computers that can stick to each other and communicate with built-in wireless - will eventually be able to shape-shift in an instant, forming a replica of anything from a banana to a human. They call it "claytronics", and the individual particles are known as claytronic atoms, or "catoms".

The possibilities are mind-boggling. For example, a lump of catoms in your house could shape-shift into a 3D facsimile of your doctor to take your pulse - while the real doctor sits in his office in front of a camera, holding your claytronic doppelgänger's wrist. The claytronic cellphone in your pocket could morph into whatever tool you need. Videoconferencing would gain a physical dimension, with all the participants appearing in claytronic form, and surgeons could even work on claytronic enlargements of internal organs to perform robotic tele-surgery with extreme precision.

Learn more about the joint venture from Carnegie Mellon and Intel Research at http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~claytronics/.

New technology alert: Perpetual Sourcing

You hear terms like "pipeline," "relationship asset" and "talent networks" being thrown around a lot these days - with the Baby Boomers impending retirement, you get the feeling that many companies are trying to board up the windows and stock up on canned food for the impending storm. Other companies are using sourcing and pipelining as a strategic weapon in their ongoing wars for talent.

Recruiting CRM is a concept whose time has come. Technologies like Salesforce (EA's excellent implementation of this set the standard in the industry), Microsoft CRM, AIRS Sourcepoint, VirtualEdge Pilot, Jobster and others are being used in an increasing number of companies as CRM and pipeline building tools. AIRS CEO Chris Forman recently remarked that it may one day be as common for companies to have recruiting CRM systems as they do ATSes.

I recently demo'd a new and interesting entry into this space, Perpetual Sourcing. Built on the open source (don't let that scare you - it's a big company) SugarCRM platform, it's a customized version of a CRM that's made for recruiters with a lot of features that can help even the most reactive organization benefit from CRM technologies. In effect, the unique configuration and implementation model helps overcome one of the most difficult parts of the Recruiting CRM space: most companies simply aren't ready for it yet.

If you're in the market for a CRM system or looking to build a pipeline ahead of demand, Perpetual Sourcing should be on your short list.

The Sourcing Checkup - How to Assess Your Team

To atone for my prior shameless self promotions sins I promised Dave that I would post a summary of my recent webinar on "The Sourcing Checkup: How to Assess Your Sourcing Team." You can view the entire webinar here:

http://www.kennedyinfo.com/corporate/recruiting/events/audio/conference/retention/detail/20061

Assessing a sourcing team is quite difficult. There’s clearly evidence that sourcing does reduce cost per hire but it is incredibly difficult to hold sourcers accountable to a "number of hires" metric like you would with recruiters. Every sourcing organization I know that has tried to do that has struggled in one way or another to provide evidence of the value of sourcing. Why? Simple...

Sourcing’s true value is often hidden from the process. Recruiters get credit for hires that "come in" via the corporate website or apply through job boards, and those that come in as employee referrals, or get converted from contract to full time. As a result, a significant portion of recruiters’ hires just happen naturally. They do not always have to "head hunt" each and every hire.

In contrast, most requisitions that sourcers are assigned will require them to go out and hunt for leads. This is much more labor intensive and time consuming, and so a sourcer can’t possibly match a recruiter in sheer number of hires but this does not mean they don’t provide value.

What do I measure to prove value then?

There’s a couple of things you can measure, but first a word about the part of assessment that has nothing to do with metrics. A big part of assessing your team comes from understanding what they do. You don’t have to be a sourcing guru to know what sourcers do. If you understand what they do you can then more clearly understand where they have been, what they have accomplished and where they need to go next. If you think sourcers are “brain surgeons” or “rocket scientists” and do “things you don’t understand at all” then before you can evaluate, assess or measure them you need to get to know what they do.

In turn your sourcers should be able to track their activity in such a was as to be able to provide you clear bottom-line data on what methods they utilize, which ones are most successful, which need to be improved, where you should spend more (and of course less) of your budget, and where some of the inefficiencies are in the candidate flow. A simple Excel spreadsheet can help you track many of these things. In the webinar I go into detail on what to track, how to build the Excel spreadsheet (or fields in your CRM instead) and what you can do with those statistics. Back to the point of “not everything is metrics” there are two more things you can use to assess your sourcing team before we get into the numbers. Those two things are Customer Feedback and Performance Against an SLA.

Hey, this is a summary, there’s no way I can fit all that in one blog post :)

How does the team interact with their customer?

You should deal with each customer group they way they want to be dealt with. Don’t assume that every customer group is going to want the same thing – “passive candidates” for example. Some may want help with high-volume low-level roles, others may prefer to get help with mid-management or leadership roles, and yet others may want help with research only, or competitive intelligence. This is why an SLA is key. In your SLA you can clearly, concisely and very simply state what two or three services your sourcing team is best equipped to offer.

Oh, and... about the SLA... KEEP IT SIMPLE! Besides stating your services the SLA should get into concisely describing exactly what you need from your customer in order to effectively help them, what you absolutely guarantee you will deliver if you get exactly what is needed, and a promise that "if sourcing delivers that, then this is what you promise to do in return for us."

Now lets go back to the metrics again.

Each organization is going to be different. Not just environmentally, but also in their need for multi-incumbent hires, high-volume hires, specialized or “difficult to find” hires and so on. I write that to explain that the numbers I’m about to tell you are going to vary quite a bit from place to place, but this is good general guideline:

• At least 50% of new leads generated should be worthy of a call
• At least 25% of them should connect with a recruiter
• Of those connects 40% or better should turn out to be interested
• Of the ones interested at least half should be qualified
• Aim for one hire for every 10 submits
• Or in other words from 100-200 leads per hire

If you do better than 100 leads per hire then you are in great shape, or if you do worse than 200 leads per hire then your team needs support, training, or re-engineering. But... before you go fire anyone...

Your sourcing team may not be the problem if...

1. There’s expectation that the sourcing team will deliver a short-term solution to what is a long-term problem.
2. There’s lack of buy-in from upper management, say, after a leadership change, restructuring, re-org, merger, etc.
3. In a closed door meeting someone high up said “Oops, we have to cut the budget! Oh, I know, let's start by cutting this sourcing team because we don't really understand what value they add.”
4. Your recruiters are afraid to pick up the phone and follow through with leads that have been sourced.
5. Your hiring managers have no clue how to treat a candidate who didn’t just apply online and still needs a bit more attention, persuading, etc.
6. Recruiters think of sourcers as junior (i.e., sourcers are entry level people who want to grow up someday to be "real" recruiters).
7. You suffer from inadequate contact management technology, both in the CRM system as well as the applicant tracking system.
8. Your recruiters suffer from over-reliance on email as the initial outreach.
9. You lack follow up with future-interest candidates. If they said “call me in 6 months” and you don’t call them, but your competitor does, you just lost a hire to your competitor.
10. Your organization fails to invest in the development and training of the sourcing team (yes, even us sourcers can learn a few things!).

I know this is just an appetizer, but drop me a line at shally (at) jobmachine (dot) net and we can discuss this further, or check out the webinar link above. Wait, before I go, a word about Upper Management Buy-in and Sustainable Sourcing. Many moons ago Jeff Hunter and the folks at EA put together a Talent Unconference and I had the honor to serve along Kristi Cavanaugh as co-facilitators on the team that came together to answer the question of sustainable sourcing. Here’s the problem statement: http://www.taluncon.com/2007/01/sustainable_sou_1.html And here’s the suggested solution our group produced: http://www.taluncon.com/2007/01/obtaining_upper.html

Cheers,

Shally 

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Click here to connect with me on LinkedIn

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You have an interview. Now. - Pay per call advertising and recruiting

I spent time with some folks from Ingenio a few nights ago, an online advertising company in the Bay Area that's doing very well these days ($100m+ in revenue, large stable of prominent clients). It was really just a social occasion, as one of my friends from college has worked for them for several years. As the night went on and we talked about their business model, I started to see some clear applications in the recruiting world.

Their main product is what's called pay per call advertising. In other words, you target people based on various criteria with a banner or text ad. If you get a person interested enough, he or she calls a phone number and gets directly routed to the right person. This works very well for automotive dealerships and local, directory-based businesses, but I could easily see a staffing firm or company using this as well.

Back in my recruitment advertising days, we ran an unbelievably successful line ad campaign in local newspapers for AT&T Wireless' Messaging unit (they were looking for people to sell pagers). The headline was simple: "You have an interview. Now." It was followed by some copy about the opportunity and a phone number to call for an immediate interview, which was really a call center we set up to ask a series of questions. It created a sense of urgency for these people and a feeling that they wouldn't have to jump through the traditional hoops to get immediately considered. We got a very high response rate.

I got the same feeling as I thought about pay per call advertising and recruiting. I immediately thought I could see Ingenio's pay-per-call advertising working well for high volume recruiting roles like call center positions, sales and retail. Or military recruiting. I could even see some healthcare positions being a good fit for this.

As I imagined the possibilities, though, I began to think this could be an excellent fit for other, more difficult to find roles - where people don't often have resumes and you're only option is to go after passive candidates or use search firms. If you target your keywords well enough, the response rate for your advertising could spike vs. waiting for a click-through or a resume submission to happen. In other words, no matter who you're targeting, this could provide a sense of immediacy that a click-and-apply scenario wouldn't, and could pay for itself rather quickly.

Would love to hear from anyone that's tried this method of advertising and what the return was.

New technology alert: Checkster

What makes a person great at their job?

• A talent management system or online assessment provider might say it's the skills and competencies a person has, which can be validated by structured data formats, a bit of job-specific pre-screening, and a series of rigorous tests (that are primarily created for small sets of recurring positions in customer service, sales and retail or highly technical roles).
• An employee survey or learning management system provider might say that it's the engagement of that particular employee along several dimensions and the things they do to grow their career.
• A performance management  system provider might say that it's the collective opinion of the hiring manager or peers that drives improvements that yield higher performance.

Checkster, a new venture from former iLogos/Taleo Research President Yves Lermusi, is taking a new and refreshing approach to driving higher organizational performance.

I recently demo'd the Checkster product and was impressed at the thought process that went into its creation. The challenges they've chosen to help solve - how can individuals better recognize and grow their true talents (as validated by their peers); use them to ensure that they're in the right role and manage their own career success; and provide a window to companies on how individuals are progressing or when they're most ripe for promotion - are challenges that remain unsolved in thousands of organizations. In the process, they might have come up with a better way to automate reference checks in the hiring process.

Positioning their tool in terms of the benefits to the employee or candidate is another revelation here. Going a step further, Checkster allows certain developmental components to remain private to the individual. This kind of thinking will definitely help drive adoption within any organization without as much of an executive push, HR follow-up or the use of reward schemes - I think you'll see a lot more of this approach being used in our industry, from job boards to ATSes to true talent management systems.

I also found the output to the organization itself was relevant, actionable and an extremely valuable set of data that would be difficult to get any other way.

In short, I look at a lot of different technologies for the customers I work with. I haven't seen one that hit the market as well-developed and thought out as Checkster in quite some time. If you're hoping to find the sweet spot between organizational performance, internal mobility and employee engagement - while giving your employees tools to help them manage their own careers - Checkster is definitely worth a look.