Recruiting in the social cloud

January 25, 2010

Not so long ago the story of a job posting by Best Buy created a small buzz in the blogosphere. What was so special about this job posting? It required applicants to hold a minimum of 250 followers on Twitter and at least one year blogging experience.

Recruiting has forever been changed by the social web and the cloudification (not a word yet, but give it time) of everyone’s information. And it has done so for both employers and employees.

“Recruiters have been forced to reinvent themselves” say the founding members of Waragon, an Argentine based recruiting firm.

For recruiters (whether in-company or specialized firms like Waragon) information is no longer their biggest asset. Nowadays a lot of people share their information on LinkedIn, Namyz, Xing or any business social network. Professionals that do not have a seat in resume cloud are at a distinctive disadvantage, so more and more people are joining in.

As a consequence channels are now full duplex. This means the passive player (e.g. someone who is on LinkedIn but is not job hunting at the moment) is now a candidate for a job offer push. Something unthought-of, say, ten years ago except for people targeted by head hunters. Back then, you used to answer job postings from a newspaper. It was a one way channel, no exposure of your persona if you did not want to.

Given this new scenario, recruiting teams had to adapt their craft dramatically and write a whole new rulebook. The information they amass as a result of candidate analysis (e.g. interviews) is still a very valuable element, but the unprocessed information used as an offset is now public and really abundant.

The new elements at play in recruiting 2.0 place the focus on the how (to use the information) as opposed to the previously predominant what (the information in itself). Some of them are:

  1. Using tools for fast search and match of candidates to positions. Companies like Linkedin have pretty cool services for recruiters. They are exploiting the precious information amassed during the years and making a profit out of it.
  2. Getting creative. There is an amazing tilt in the scales when recruiting with Google style campaigns. Although eccentric, they are incredibly effective and more and more companies are starting to copy their methods.
  3. Brand-streaming. Communicating your company values, positive that is (you obviously tend to hide the dirt. Duh!) This often means a candidate already knows your company, even before you pre-select him.
  4. Crowd-sourcing. As a result of the buzz in the Best Buy example presented at the beginning of this post, Best Buy quickly became, by word of mouth, the apple in the eye of many a professional seeking a job with matching characteristics. Money could not have paid for that kind of publicity. That is what crowd-sourcing your recruiting is all about: getting the buzz to do your work.
  5. Taking advantage of the new channels. I’ve seen a lot of recruiters posting on Facebook, Twitter, etc. Besides being directly related to crowd-sourcing, it implies learning how to use these new tools efficiently.
  6. Listening to the social alerts. Whenever I get asked for a recommendation, or see someone getting them; whenever I see someone polishing his online resume beyond the obvious, then I know… this guy is moving from passive to active job hunting. That gets to the HR staff in your company too. I recall a number of times when as a manager I got calls from HR saying: “John Doe is on the move”. This is an advantage for employers because they are allowed pre-emptive damage control. If they are attentive that is.

On the employee side of things, aside from the obvious new jobs created by the cloud and the web 2.0, things are also significantly changed. A few things that caught my attention:

  1. New skills. As the Best Buy experience suggests, job requirements have additional social skill-sets in demand: Blogging, tweeting, etc. These are a plus in certain job descriptions, even if not related to social marketing positions per se. For instance: If you have a big network, you are a potential recruiter of your friends and colleagues once you are in.
  2. Everyone is a networker. In the old days networking was reserved for sales people, hr people, high management types and public relations professionals. The new model increases your chances to find new jobs by word of mouth or, as mentioned before, be targeted by companies seeking to fill a position.
  3. Decisions are made in a much more informed manner. You can find opinions of your potential new employer in blogs, forums, comments, or other formats. Here is where an appropriate brand-streaming is important on behalf of employers. If your brand is shot down in the blogosphere, then you will be hard pressed to get candidates to hop on board.
  4. Personal brand-streaming. You can build a pretty decent online persona even if you are not one in actuality. The right amount of bullshitting in the right places can get you a long way these days. Before your true self catches up with you, you can be comfortably seated in your new office.
  5. Odd situations. People in my teams were sometimes called by HR people in our very company to offer them the same position they held, with a higher pay! It was hardly an isolated incident, as this story suggests.

Waragon dixit: “What hasn’t changed is that if you are good, you will have options”

Maybe nowadays you will have a lot more options without looking for them. Deciding what to do with them is a test of character.

Welcome to Recruiting 2.0

Shuje

On my next post I will tell you who dah man is. I can anticipate this much: It’s not you. In the meantime, tell me your experiences in the new recruiting era. Post them below or mail me at shuje@holoom.com

2 Comments | Social Miscellanea, Trends | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by shuje

Office fauna – Wandering meddlers

January 11, 2010

Ever since I wrote my post on office fauna a considerable number of readers (i.e. two people) have asked that I deliver more descriptions of the creatures that haunt the IT hallways. Instead of doing another big delivery I decided to deliver installments with one creature per post. I’m going to take this approach for several reasons, the main one being that I’m extremely lazy. Today I’m going to talk about the wandering meddler.

Meddlers are predators that feed on the attention of others. They usually hunt during office hours looking for conversations that are happening between two or more people and when they find one, they patiently await a cue to jump in uninvited and participate.

There are social meddlers who like to jump in mainly into social conversations; work meddlers who mostly feed on conversations regarding professional activities and omnivores who will break into whatever is happening as long as they can grab the limelight for a few moments and dazzle you with their wonderful worldview (not!).

They are extremely territorial and dislike the presence of fellow meddlers since they tend to compete for the attention they so eagerly seek. They are usually obnoxious people that would otherwise not be invited to participate in the conversation to begin with. They also lack self criticism or they would realize they are not welcome.

Depending on the rank of the person, they could be extremely hard to avoid. High-ranking meddlers are especially difficult because it could prove a career faux-pas to tell off your boss or superior.

To effectively deal with a meddler one must cultivate patience and the ability to simulate a cell phone call to extricate oneself from a conversation without arising suspicions.

Shuje

On my next post I will explain why I use words such as “extricate” and “faux pas” without knowing what they mean. In the meantime, post your thoughts, suggestions and experiences with office fauna below or mail them to shuje@holoom.com

4 Comments | Office Life | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by shuje

Talking is not the goal of a meeting

January 4, 2010

If there was a tool that could monetize the time wasted on useless meetings I assure you CEOs everywhere would go berserk and start punching people. The fact is the higher up the chain of command your resources are the more likely they will spend a lot of time in meetings, and the more their wasted hours will cost you.

The title for this post is worth emphasizing: Talking is not the goal of a meeting.

Meetings have specific goals. These are not always tangible or even measurable but very real nonetheless. Although there are several types of meetings with several purposes, they all usually fall under one or more of the following:

  1. Informative meetings: The goal is to communicate something. Examples of these are one-on-ones for communicating a promotion, status update meetings with clients, corporate gatherings to communicate news, sales pitches, etc.
  2. Decision making meetings: These are held to discuss certain topics and make decisions for later action. Examples of these are board meetings, management meetings, etc.
  3. Social meetings: After office parties, office-hour lunches, birthday celebrations, etc. Although one would be tempted to say that these meetings are just for talking, the goal is to build team spirit.
  4. Work meetings: Working together is better than pulling the cart alone. Working in the same room or getting together to tackle something with a team, could prove very useful.

You will probably find more categories or a different way or categorizing them. That’s fine; I wasn’t trying to set a standard.

As an example the goal for a sales pitch is to ultimately sell your product or service. The goal can be easily ascertained: At some point in time it’s either you’ve made the sale or not.

A meeting for team building has no measurable goal. Hopefully once it’s over you will notice some improvements, but it is never as tangible as the previous example.

The following is a brief list of common setbacks I’ve come across when participating in meetings:

Lack of proper facilities: You would not believe how many times I had to improvise because the meeting organizer forgot to book a conference room or a phone bridge. Also projectors, white boards, presentations, everything required to carry out the meeting should be prepared with anticipation.

Misunderstanding the goal of the meeting: If the purpose of the meeting is deciding budget cuts for next quarter and someone brings a beer keg and party hats things are bound to go to the crapper. At the very least, the meeting organizer should understand what the meeting is for and try to set a proper tone.

Lack of an agenda: Let’s leave social gatherings out of this one. For the rest of the meeting types a meeting roadmap, usually represented in the form of an agenda is a great aid. Even for one on ones, having some predefined structure can help direct the meeting. Agendas should not be improvised as a last minute thing. They should be prepared with anticipation.

Absence of a moderator: In every meeting someone has to moderate. Usually someone handles the timing, the agenda, the action item list, etc. The moderator could be appointed formally or tacitly. Often times when no moderator is appointed someone takes it upon himself to naturally lead the proceedings.

Compulsive talkers: I knew a manager that was so enamored of his voice that meeting durations invariably multiplied tenfold and nothing useful came out of them. He would go on and on for hours not even scratching the surface of the predefined topics. Everyone would leave the room a bit older and a lot dumber, wondering how he / she could make up for the lost time and what on earth was that all about.

Meeting output: Some meetings have a byproduct called the action item list. This is a set of tasks with a deadline and the person accountable for executing it. If decisions are made but there is no proper action item list as the output of the meeting, and moreover, this action item list is not periodically revised, then the meeting might as well not have existed in the first place.

Distracted participants: This one I never figured out how to solve, mainly because I’m part of the problem here. People will read e-mails, answer cell phone calls, chat, etc. Smart-phones and laptops are so common in everyday corporate life that having everyone focused on the meeting is almost impossible.

My favorite meetings are those in which everything is prepared with a reasonable degree of anticipation. They have an agenda, all the facilities necessary to carry it out, a moderator, an action item list as output and a minute of the meeting to set everything in stone. These meetings leave everyone with a sense of accomplishment. Sadly, most meetings I’ve been a part of, are nothing like that.

CEOs everywhere: Start punching and always remember what Dwight from The Office said: “The eyes are the groin of the head”

Shuje

On my next post I will show you very graphic evidence as to why banana hammocks should be banned. Until then please comment below or send me details of your bad meeting experiences to shuje@holoom.com

6 Comments | Office Life | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by shuje