Video - Hiring for Startups - My talk at Talent Leaders Connect

Recently I was asked to speak at The Job Post event, Talent Leaders Connect.  I talked about startups, a little psychology and a hypothetical kitten kicking factory... no really!

 

Back to regular blogging soon!

Why Job Adverts Suck and What You Can Do About It.

At the start of this year, and many years before it the pundits of HR and Recruitment (yes, they really exist) make predictions for the year ahead.  As well as borrowing heavily from the mantras of Silicon Valley startups promising to be social, mobile and local there is always one persistent prediction that never seems to go away.

The mists in the crystal ball clear and a vision of the future appears, with absolute certainty, our forecasters declare "The Job Description will cease to exist!".  Then, as if to mock that same prescient certainty, they don't.

Despite the flaws of the formats on both side of the job seeker chasm things seem to stay the same.  Whilst the prognosticators may lament that their visions haven't been proven right the world keeps turning, recruiters still want to see your CV and HR departments the world over keep posting banal job descriptions.  As much as recruiters may decry applicants for their terrible CVs or offer advice on how not make CV mistakes there doesn't seem to be quite the same amount of concern for the job descriptions and adverts that they themselves post supposedly to entice those looking for work.

The average job description is currently a mishmash of an older version of the original specification, some amendments from an enthusiastic new hiring manager and some sexier phrases stolen from various other company's career pages.  When you stop to consider the amount of work that marketers put into a banner or headline just to make a viewer click it's mind boggling to think that recruiters expect people to consider making such an enormous change to their lives on the basis of bland copy and trite cliché.

There must be a better way... and there is...

In 1943 Abraham Maslow published his paper "A Theory of Human Motivation" in the Psychological Review. He posited a series of human drivers that worked sequentially, the lowest order of which must be satisfied in order to achieve the next. For example when starving to death we're unlikely to be concerned with how our peer group thinks of us, until we meet that more basic need.

 Maslow used the terms "physiological", "safety", "belonging", "esteem", "self-actualization" to describe the pattern that human motivations generally move through.  If we are using the format of a job advert as a means to motivating an action from a reader, could we borrow from the Maslow model to ensure that we are writing a well rounded and engaging advertisement?  Without too much of a mental stretch it's easy to see how these stages can be made applicable to pressing on the underlying motivations a person may have when wanting to apply or even moving from casual interest to intention and ultimately action.  At the very least we could use a model to broaden the appeal of a job advert and hit more of the motivational bases that Maslow identified.

The lowest order motivator for a job seeker has to be salary.  Whilst it is foundational and important it can quickly be satisfied and judged accordingly.  Try putting the actual salary range on your job postings and voilà the majority who apply will have some idea of how much you are prepared to pay for the role.  Assuming that your job is not unpaid or a front for slave labour stating a salary is a good idea.  Promising adequate or even fair pay for a candidate's toil should never be the best motivator you have to play.  Put simply, cash should never be your "ace in the hole",  if it is it's time to rethink the role.  Try talking to some other people who already do the job and ask them why they like it. Try to gain a deeper insight into the persona of those who enjoy the job - chances are that their reasons are probably inline with a potential employee's too.  It tends to be the third party recruiters who's job postings feature salary as the biggest incentive. "Java Developer $90,000" is a great indicator that the poster hasn't really understood the real differentiators or their target audience.

For a lot of job posts salary is where we stop. There may be other details given about the company doing the recruitment or a technology stack but these will be generic and explanatory e.g. "You will write code and fix bugs" these are statements which would be true of the same role in another organisation.  How can we make this a little more personal? Maslow's second step in the hierarchy is "Safety".  For job seekers this may take the form of permanent vs. contract or the security of your company as an entity.  These can be addressed early on, from startups referring to themselves as "VC funded" or larger corporates stating successes "Safety" should be accepted as quickly as the salary stage.  If you don't meet the needs of the job seeker here i.e. lower than expected salary and indeterminate contract length they will self select out of the process, and that's a good thing at this stage.  Remember a great job advert isn't about mass appeal it's about gaining the interest of the right people.  

A growing number of companies are following in the footsteps of the larger technical organisations and offering a bewildering number of perks and free incentives to their employees.  These are the hyperbolic tales of free food, dogs in the workplace, on site masseuses and hot and cold running champagne.  Who wouldn't want those things? However a lot of job adverts fall at this hurdle.  Promising money and free things are are a great way to have someone make a small change. Switching a bank account or internet service provider maybe but surely not enough to change employers?  Job security should be implied in any job description and the benefits and perks are nice to haves - but don't be swayed into thinking they are enough.

Maslow's third tier was "belonging" or "love".  For a job advert how can we convey a sense of somewhere a candidate might want to belong?  This is where a lot of job adverts fear to tread. We stop at the inanimate perks and don't consider the social interactions that having a job will bring.  Belonging in job adverts is best conveyed through the people the candidate will be working with. Humans are (mostly) social creatures and benefit from interaction.  Who really wants to spend eight hours a day treading the same carpet as people you hate? At the other end of the spectrum who would want to work with an ex-colleague or former manager who was an inspirational leader? Who might want to join a team of renowned experts in their field?  If we make a job advert generic and impersonal e.g. "You will work with our team of developers" we risk becoming generic.  Talking about the team is an opportunity to sell successes to a candidate and gain engagement from selling the pedigree of a potential peer group.  In the world of startup it's normal to see adverts proclaiming founders who are ex-Google or ex-Facebook in this way an employer borrows some of the perceived quality bar of their previous employers.

Another consideration for the "Team" level of a job advert is how the team organise and work together.  A job may be more attractive for a reader if it explicitly states that the team don't like to hold lengthy meetings, or that they work closely with other parts of the business.  There are some great examples here that would make brilliant recruiting messages like Spotify's excellent Engineering Culture video. For those who are harbouring frustrations about their current employer's bureaucracy or lack of insight and innovation, referring to how the prospective employing company gets work done can be revealing and enlightening.  Moreover, talking candidly about these things can help convey authenticity and engender trust in the reader.

For his fourth level Maslow talked about "Esteem".  This is the need for appreciation and respect.  People need to sense that they are valued and by others and feel that they are making a contribution to the world. When employees become unhappy and disengaged they slowly start to stagnate.  If they feel under appreciated or second best to others this happens all the quicker.  It may seem obvious to mention that  people like to feel valued but in a job advertisement it is wholly appropriate to mention how the role they will play will be important to the rest of the team or company.  It's a certainty that some of the role you're advertising will be similar to other roles at other companies - in these cases it's important to differentiate at a personal level.  It's a rare candidate that wants to be a cog in machine but still I see companies loudly proclaiming they are hiring "one thousand software developers this year!" the intended message is clearly designed to be one of security, though it's hard to escape from a different "come and be one of a crowd" vibe.  Remember a good job advert spurs the correct audience into action and acts as a self selection point for those who are not right.  A job advert should not be generic enough to attract all comers - if it does you just ensure that someone will have to wade through the mire of terrible candidates and machine gun applicants that apply to everything.

Knowing that the role you are performing is worthwhile and needed is a far better motivator than the lower level "carrot and stick" incentives of salary and mock "benefits" of legally mandated holiday entitlements.  The better job adverts will mention those truly motivating factors - autonomous working, results driven environments without the reliance of rules and policies.  This further adds authenticity and can be a real differentiator for a reader.

So what's left?  You have an advert for a new job that tells a candidate they'll be adequately financially rewarded, they'll be given a great set of benefits and the company is secure so their job will be too.  You've told them about the great team they they get to work with and then you've gone on to tell them how they'll fit into that team and why the work they will do is important and needed.  If you said that was all a job could do it's still pretty compelling, but Maslow has a further tier on the road to fulfilment.  "Self- actualisation". This is the final level of psychological development that can be achieved when all basic and mental needs are essentially fulfilled and the "actualisation" of the full personal potential takes place. Research shows that when people live lives that are different from their true nature and capabilities, they are less likely to be happy than those whose goals and lives match.

In job advertising terms how can we then offer this form of greater fulfilment to a prospective candidate?  A majority of job descriptions fail in the balance of power they portray.  Despite the current market for hires becoming tighter, in far too many posts on job boards there is a weird "you should be thankful that we deign to allow you to read this" holier than thou language choice that only the most spirit crushed drone would find engaging.  However, this has become the accepted convention for weird mash-up of job description cum advert that employers post. Part internal HR document, part external facing "sexed-up" hyperbole.

Instead of using language straight out of the mouths of the mill owners of the Industrial Revolution why not let candidates know what they stand to gain from being an employee.  What are the experiences they will have that will let them grow as individuals.  Will they gain new skills or be trained in new areas?  Will they get to mentor or be mentored by other employees leading to more rewarding interactions? Will they have the scope and the freedom to be truly creative? Are they empowered to innovate? This is the future facing final tier of any great job advert and if you can hint at a brighter future for those who come and work for you it might just be the tipping point for them to hit that big red apply button.

The Bidding War for Talent - When Motivation is More Than Money.

The war for talent is a term coined by Steven Hankin of McKinsey & Company in 1997.  It has since become a cliché. It's used as both a rallying cry and a cause for concern for HR and recruiting professionals everywhere.  Whilst the "war" metaphor is overused and without appreciation of the nuance of hiring it has become popular to look upon hiring people as either winning or losing.

In the current labour market certain skill-sets are at a premium.  The current demand for developers/programmers/software engineers, call them what you will, in both the tech giants and the smallest of startups has led to an increase in the cost and the style of hiring.  Scarcity or the perception of scarcity has meant that salaries have increased.  This is even happening to the point that certain programming languages become annually fashionable, "Ruby was so last year darling! It's all about Python now!".

In support of the notion of that scarcity a raft of tools have begun to appear and enabled a new breed of recruiting professionals - the Sourcers.  In the new paradigm more weight is given through the sifting of information and "finding" is the goal, occasionally it seems, at the expense of hiring.  The market seems to support this as more companies are created to solve the "problem" of talent discovery. In turn salaries rise and more tools appear.

I am in favour of developers being paid a fair wage for their work.  I'm even more in favour of the more skilled coders be paid better.  In my time as a recruiter so far I've personally hired developers on basic salaries as low as £25,000 to as high as £2,000,000 (really!).   However, there's a problem in how the industry is accessing this skill set.  Increasingly, recruiting departments facing the need for volume have dehumanised the very people they are seeking to attract to the point of commodification.  This seems to have affected developers even more so as the traditional HR departments demonstrated their lack of understanding of their technical staff.  In the climate of scarcity and increased demand the recruiting industry has responded by shifting the easiest lever to pull, money.

This seems to make sense at the surface level.  Surely people will be more motivated to apply for a new job if the salary is higher than their current remuneration?  The latest aberration of this mindset is the online auction for talent, Hired.com.  Here recruiters effectively bid for the opportunity to interview candidates. There's even urgency injected in the form of a time limit on the "auction".  Here's the real problem for me, any tool that changes the behaviours of an organisation it is being utilised by is also changing or at least reflecting a different culture.  For the candidate who is looking for a role having a rabid pack of companies compete for you may seem flattering but the truth is in this eBay of humans the "product" being sold is the very people Hired has ostensibly been set up to help.

Edward L. Deci is a Professor of Psychology and Gowen Professor in the Social Sciences at the University of Rochester, and director of its human motivation program.  Deci has conducted a multitude of experiments on human motivation and uncovering the "why" of why we do the things we do.  Far from agreeing with the prevailing thought that explicit financial reward was a motivator for increased performance he found the opposite "When money is used as an external reward for some activity, the subjects lose intrinsic interest for the activity".   The basic certainties we hold about labour and "work" haven't really been updated since the industrial revolution.  The initial boost of productivity offered in response to the external motivation of money soon wears off - to hold interest and that increased productivity there has to be something more.

Employers who base their attraction strategy solely on a financial driver are missing the opportunity to attract potentially better suited candidates to their roles.  Whilst is may be true that working in a larger organisation may offer a higher financial reward this may come at the cost of other areas of reward - the ability to make a personal impact on the product, recognition or even a sense of personal pride.  As an employer who competes only on price you always run the risk of being priced out of the market yourself.  A developer role at a games company may be fulfilling and a passion project for someone, a larger games studio can afford to pay more and cherry pick individuals, however when those skills suddenly become important to an investment bank with even deeper pockets individuals motivated by money can be further tempted away.

Corporate recruiters have blindly accepted that the way to engage the job seeking community is the price tag and minimal description of the role or why it matters to the larger organisation.  As recruiters we are taking away some of the best ammunition we have in this "War for Talent".  If you can communicate what a candidate will be doing, who they'll work with, why that's important and how they'll go on to contribute to the future of the company you might just see a greater engagement from those that see the ad.

If winning isn't just ownership of the "resource" but winning the engagement of a person, the "hearts and minds" if you will how can we compete?  The answer is to know your true value proposition.  You might even want to consider talking to your current employees and asking what made them join. Tell your potential hires why they might like to work for you, not just that you have a spare desk and have priced their skills in relation to your competitors.  Venues like auction sites are not the answer for true long term engagement, for that we need to make sure we are creating roles that people would love to do - that they are paid fairly in relation to their peer group and rewarded for the value they add should be a given.

“You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don’t make money your goal. Instead pursue the things you love doing and then do them so well that people can’t take their eyes off of you.” - Maya Angelou

"They'll buy anything" - 10 steps to selling terrible software to Human Resources Departments

There's so much investment in HR and Recruiting tech at the moment there's never been a better time to monezite your confirmation bias, join the chorus of "Recruitment is broken!" and release a tool that ignores the "human" in Human Resources!  

Now all that stands in your way are the shadowy, purse-string wrangling HR directors.  How can we get past them?  Here are ten things you can do right now to start up, cash in, sell out and bro down!


STEP ONE - Say "It has an algorithm".

First of don't worry if you don't know what an algorithm is, neither do the majority of buyers of HR software.  What they will know is that the internet services and companies they have heard of all have algorithms.  They all use Google and the more savvy amongst them might use terms like "matching" or "ranking", in these cases it's best to just keep saying that your new tool has an algorithm and to look knowingly at them.  Remember it's always good practice to use the strength of your algorithm to cover up horrific design choices.  If a prospective customer is thinking about buying another tool be sure to belittle it and claim that the ugly, clunky interface you preside over is "hardcore computer science".


STEP TWO - Hold them to a lengthy "implementation period".

Remember the good old days when we all sold databases and they had to buy hardware and software to make it (sort of) work? Sadly the wealth of better software in other areas has made HR buyers expect more before signing those contracts.  Help indemnify your company against any expected or promised service levels by insisting on a lengthy "implementation period".  In almost every other discipline software is now sold as a service, like a utility with data stored on servers in the cloud.  Tell your buyers this is insecure and "a risk". The mention of "risk" is the kryptonite of the HR department.


STEP THREE - Don't have a API - Make them pay extra if they want to use their existing data or integrate with another tool!

After you've held your buyer to the customary length implementation period it's time to deliver half of the functionality they originally requested.  Be sure to leave out any particular features that they liked when they saw the software as these can be added later as "modules" and priced accordingly. Similarly if they'd like to import their existing candidate or employee database make sure that you charge for this.  Remember - Compatibility is for wimps! Why would you want to let them use another tool that's better than yours? Make exporting that data just as difficult as importing it was!


STEP FOUR - They'll want "analytics" - Add a graph!

If you've been to any of the conferences you'll have heard that "Big Data" is the next cool thing to have.  You should start by dropping into conversation that your tool/app/rebranded ATS has a "Big Data approach".  Don't worry about getting called out on this, like "algorithm" it's one of the #HRTech magic words.  You will however have to ensure that you provide some "analytics" to your users.  It's important to either not measure anything that will encourage the user to ask more questions or to make generating a report on the data so impregnable and counter intuitive that the user will rely on the templates included and not be encouraged to expect anything that is of real use.


STEP FIVE - Advertise it as "White-labelled" - Allow them to upload a low resolution jpeg of their logo.

"Culture" is so hot right now. When selling to HR and Recruitment buyers tell them that your software can help them "differentiate" themselves and "level the playing field".  For most of your buyers "culture" will probably boil down to them uploading a photo of their office and a logo.  Let them do this and maybe even let them link to their Pinterest page.  If your buyer talks a lot about their unique culture remember to always refer to candidates and applicants as a "talent pool" they'll love it.


STEP SIX - Copy a competitor's tool.

There are so many products available for recruiters and HR professionals out there at the moment that there will undoubtedly be a tool that does the same thing as the software you're selling, probably better too.  It's not enough just to rely on buyer ignorance or indifference.  In some cases it will be prudent and ensure the sale, to implement a "sort of" feature that does "almost" the same thing.  Don't worry that it's not as good as the original tool you've copied you'll still hit the requirement on the buyer's checklist and there won't be any comeback as they are invariably not the ones who'll have to use it!

The best thing about these MSF's (minimum saleable features) is that with enough of them you can call the resultant Frankenstein's monster a "platform" and make even loftier claims.  Whilst the most prudent recruiters will use the right tool for the right job it will pay you to remember that the buyers aren't the users here and if you can sell them the dream of seamless interaction they'll be nice and blinkered later on when the reality is a cobbled together hotchpotch of "almost tools".


STEP SEVEN - Say it's "Social".

The "social" bandwagon is still trundling along nicely and whilst the forerunners have already realised it takes time and a personality to be truly social, there's still money to be made from those wanting a shortcut.  A link to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn should be enough, remember the best thing is that "social" can't be owned by a service provider, instead it relies on the user investing time and authenticity - if it fails it's never the tools fault! Brilliant!

It's important as a vendor to only talk about "social" in very broad terms, HR departments are a flighty bunch and it was only last week they had all banned the use of any social media at all now the other extreme is true and all their current "social tools" spit out and reiterate their job postings to the few that follow them.


STEP EIGHT - Reinvent the wheel - take a free tool they are already using and make them pay for it!

When adding features it's important to monetize tools that HR and Recruitment currently use for free. Skype and Google Hangouts are both free and been in wide usage for years by interviewers all over the world, cost benefits abound and these are saleable.  Of course you'll have to argue that Skype and Hangouts are of inferior quality or use value to your shiny new tool, you can do this by adding weird functionality like recorded responses. Video interviewing is great because is allows a human connection, let's get rid of that and have people record their answers to posed questions! Thus robbing the emotional interaction and reducing the tool to some voyeur's delight and reducing the recruiter to a passive couch potato condemned to watching the worst reality TV show ever imagined...


STEP NINE - Force the customer into your workflow.

Despite their protestations that they all want to be unique and different, it's never stopped a vast number of companies forcing their candidates into redundant form filling and duplication of effort.  As the software provider you should only care about the buyer, candidates should be made to apply in triplicate if it so pleases the bill payer.  Remember you'll only actually reveal the absurd workflow or user interaction after the buyer has signed, users may end up doing insane things like emailing resumes to themselves but after you've got your money that's their lookout.  Regardless that the client will be wanting to differentiate themselves to prospective employees it's less time and hassle to make them all leap through the same hoops.  If your tool does include candidate contact feel free to include some email templates - it's best to make these non-editable and send at random points just for fun...


STEP TEN - DO NOT talk to anyone who will actually use the tool during requirements capture.

This is the most important step.  Before you sell anything to anyone, before you even start to build any software, don't under any circumstances talk to a user from HR or Recruitment.  Most people who will eventually use your tool will actually want to be saved from repetitive tasks or data entry, they'll want a tool that enhances their abilities, they'll have a list of workarounds that they currently endure with existing tools and they might even have ideas of their own.

Whilst these would result in a more useable tool they won't necessarily be attractive to the buyers in HR (who won't be using the tool you're building), the potential investors who will want to buy your tool or even confirm your own bias as to why "Recruitment is broken". It's best to completely disregard potential users of your software and applicants/those who will be used by the software.


Armed with this sage advice you'll be well prepared to produce a tool that will garner a lot of attention and sizeable investment whilst adding almost nothing to an organisations ability to hire or retain people.  Remember there's no individual or human interaction that can't be successfully repressed or ignored by a well implemented process or tool!

Job Titles and Perception - Ninjas, Gurus and Rockstars?

Somewhat unfairly, I tweeted this comparison recently.

The photo compares the titles afforded to two luminaries of the technical world.  One is Sir Tim Berners-Lee, he implemented the first successful communication between a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) client and server via the Internet and is often credited as being the "Inventor of the World Wide Web".  The other is David Shing, a speaker and futurologist for AOL, the American mass media organisation.  I offered the comparison, as unfair as it is, flippantly and the seeming disparity for Berners-Lee's humility and Shing's presumption seemed to hit a nerve with the twitter audience.

As a recruiter it makes me think.  If we can all see a disparity so huge in this example that is becomes absurd why do we still see people using titles that seem at odds with an individual's function in an organisation?

Your job title communicates a lot more than you might realise.  Regardless of what an employer calls you most are pretty indifferent to you presenting yourself differently online.  The titles people self identify with can have a larger affect on the perception of the individual than you might expect.  Particularly in technical organisations there are a wealth of titles that are used to describe the same role - so how does the onlooker separate the Ninjas, Rockstars and Gurus from the Craftsmen, the Programmers and the plain old (like Sir Tim) Web Developers?  In making a choice and opting for a "wacky" title you make a statement that will shape the perception of others.  In most of these cases, for most of the people I've spoken to, they see a correlation with self claimed Ninja, Rockstars and an overestimation of their own skills and abilities.  For most of the people I've spoken to there is a connotation to brogrammer culture and the identification as the "Ninja" in question seeking to portray themselves as the hero in their own particular story...

All of this might be fine.  If the employer you want to work for has this culture you'll fit in well and probably be successful.  I don't think it's helpful for potential candidates to seek to be seen in this light.  The best technologists I've worked with, "best" here being the feedback from peers and the community, were also the most humble.  These were the people who had created tools and languages the world over, known in their fields as leaders and yet they let their achievements speak for themselves.

What then of a company that advertises to hire a "Rockstar Developer"? If a company advertises for Ninjas, Gurus and Rockstars does the reader infer that they are a fun place to work with little hierarchy or that the environment will be competitive and celebrate the individual over the team as a whole? For me that distinction is too great of a risk, I wouldn't want the advert to put people off applying for a job they might be otherwise perfect for, at the very least I'd prefer a part of the process to determine their fit rather than their reaction to a joke job title.  Whilst this might be true for me and the companies I recruit for if might not be the same for your organisations.  For example this video, recruiting developers for Kixeye, might illustrate they'd love some Ninjas to apply.  A company advertising might want to take the time to reflect on what their job title means for attraction.  Remember that whilst you might love the fact your business card proudly states you're a "Ruby Ninja", a "Marketing Badass" or even the "Chief Instigation Officer" (yes really!) the communication of these ideas is a two way street and your true meaning will always be affected by the listener's own values, attitudes and beliefs.

Whatever your job title and however you want to portray yourself, awareness is key.  The next time you have to respond to this type of job title this site might help.  For employers who might be using these job titles just for the shock value, I'm afraid that time has already passed, perhaps you could consider becoming a not for "Prophets" organisation?

The Abusive Relationship between HR Technology and its Users

A green screen flickers in the corner of the office.  It is "The System". Management don't understand "The System".  It's a confusing, alien world.  The bright horizons of technological advance leave those that guard the old ways of working squinting in the glow.  As time moves on the piles of paper and files are replaced with computers and newer instances of the same system.  Functionality moves forward, no longer the electronic filing system, now the system has snaked it's way into all aspects of the HR world.  The system knows when you arrived, you tell it when you're going on holiday, it knows you got married, it knows about your children, it will will auto-generate your P45 and alert security to escort you our of the door.

Whenever I happen across an organisation that uses one of the "traditional" HR systems it's never long before the discussion turns a little Orwellian.  I never hear these complaints from the management tier of the organisations - just those that are forced to interact with an outdated system that has been imposed upon them.  As Human Resources became more computerised, efficiencies were created at the expense of those very same resources it wished to aid - the humans.

The biggest offenders of the dehumanisation of HR Tech are those systems that started life in the minds of the suppliers of manufacturing technology.  If an HR system is has at it's heart the basic stuff of a supply chain management system is it any wonder that your employees will feel used by the system as opposed to valued or better in control of it.  Of course this doesn't just extend as far as the end user.  Limitations of a poorly implemented HR system can shape or even change HR policies themselves.  You wanted to give that amazing maternity leave deal? Sorry, the system doesn't support it.  Wanted to award industry beating compensation tracking? Computer says "no".

Technology in the human resources department became an ivory tower.  The situation worsened as technology advanced in the outside world.  Far from the gaining efficiency technology in human resources forces people to retain knowledge of arcane systems, to manage decaying programming languages and become beholden to dead data structures.  Locked into vendor licensing agreements and having to deal with clunky technology everyday Stockholm Syndrome sets in.  Gradually HR departments began to become more and more like the broken systems they used.  How many HR departments administer to the people they used to represent solely through a system. How many of us have tried to talk directly to someone who works in HR only to be referred to a different part of system.  In building the one-stop shop for everything HR would need, solution providers didn't stop to consider the the knock-on effects - the people processed by the new breed of catch-all technologies are left feeling empty and embittered.  How many employees have come to resent their colleagues in HR because of the way they are forced to interact by poor software?

The provider of the solutions and those that buy the solutions are in a race to the bottom.  They seem to go to great lengths to alienate both those who try to use the software and those who receive a service via it.  In the ongoing dance between supplier and buyer of HR Technology the dance floor is left all but empty for the minority, whilst the majority stake holders, the users and those that are used, are left un-consulted.  The problem here is a "perfect storm" of wrongheaded software production with a manufacturing bent meeting a buying audience that seem to be wilfully technologically un-savvy.  The buyers of software in human resources are always looking for the new and the shiny, this trend is particularly pronounced in the sphere of recruitment where the improvement is always incremental yet the added value sold to the buyer is always exponential. Is there ever a new recruitment tool that promises an "edge" rather than a magical world changing experience. The naivety of the buying audience allows sub-rate suppliers to peddle hyperbole driven claims like arms dealers of solve-all magic bullets.

How many of the HR buying audience have decided on purchases for less than optimal reasons.  How many of those would candidly admit to having wasted their budgets afterwards?  In my career to date I have used some terrible software that I've had to use because of weird purchasing decisions and I've heard some terrible reasons for it's purchase.  "The salesperson used to work here", "The HR Director knows X from the supplier", "We held a review and they presented better..." - all lousy reasons, and in all of these cases the person who made the buying decision had very little interaction with the system after the purchase.  The self fulfilling prophecy of imperfect software being purchased for suboptimal reasons continues, locked in, hostages for the term of the next license agreement.

In striving to produce ever more sparkly baubles for HR Directors to purchase in their quest to appear relevant, software producers increasingly look towards other domains and piggyback on their "buzz".  How many solutions in the HR world are now sporting the reflected glory of "mobile", "video" or "social" as a reason they will offer increased benefits?  Recently we've seen a spate of Tinder clones for recruitment. "Machine learning" solutions who's matching algorithms seem to be attempting to solve the problem of having hired bad recruiters. Even video interviewing platforms,  because video is the next "big thing"...after all it worked so well for all those cat videos on YouTube.  As Jeff Goldblum's character said in Jurassic Park "...your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should" - we're at a stage where any technological advance is seen as something for recruiters to exploit.  Want to know if a recruiter understands "social"? If they show you all the wonderful work they've done with Pinterest and Instagram, they don't get it.

There is some light at the end of this dark and scary tunnel.  A handful of suppliers are producing software that is not only good for recruitment and HR but good for the users too.  Software at it's best in HR is responsible for the removal of a lot of the pain of processes, procedures and regulation that would normally cause friction.  A great software solution removes the burden of repetition, it gives momentum and doesn't detract from HR doing what they used to best connecting with and advocating for the people they work with.  There are some suppliers that understand that HR Technology doesn't have to be ugly. Using it doesn't have to leave you feeling miserable and depressed, there are even some suppliers who are making their users lives easier.  There's the frictionless importing of candidates into the Workable ATS using a Chrome plugin, there are an increasing number of beautiful calendar apps incorporating to do lists that scale to support entire companies and there's even the easy way to do expenses using apps like Concur or Expensify. The difference is that there's a great tool for each stage not a mediocre tool for all stages.

The growing fragmentation in the marketplace has allowed for smaller suppliers to enter and give us some true innovation.  I can only hope this also means that the clunky mega solutions of HR history don't have to be inflicted on many more employee populaces before buyers see the light.  HR departments should realise that whilst technology is the great enabler, when it's old and outdated it's a great alienator.  Employees have access to better hardware and software than their employers in many cases and this isn't tide going to reverse any time soon.  The technically savvy HR managers will win the respect of their organisations or be doomed to lose employees to those that do.  The days of "hired to retired" cradle to grave style bloated solutions are over.  Using the right tool at the right time and having the courage to change that tool if necessary is becoming more and more important.

In October I'll be attending the HR Tech Europe 2014 European Conference in Amsterdam and I'm looking forward to hearing about the future of an industry which is at a turning point.  The old vendors will be there no doubt, but I'll be looking for the innovators and the upstarts.

Why the Recruitment Revolution won't be sparked with Tinder - Candy Crush for your Career?

The world of HR and recruitment software seems to be going through something of a renaissance as of late.  The world that was dominated by user-unfriendly bloatware is becoming increasingly fragmented.  As more players rose to fill the gaps in usability for a beleaguered audience so smaller competitors rose up too.  For a small provider or startup, HR is a domain ripe for disruption.  It bears all the hallmarks of an industry that at it's surface looks unchanged.  For the founders of startups who may have been at the unfulfilling receiving end of so many HRBP's in larger organisations HR is a logical starting point for your new disruptive software solution.

In the mists of history where HR met software has only led to monolithic structures or rebrands of logistics software. The people in these electronic processes treated in the same way as stock to fill shelves or car parts for an insatiable assembly line.  The same clunking UI that held payroll information for accounts and performance data for HR was rolled out and forced on recruiters for managing the applications of new candidates. The biggest competitive advantage was the supposed "ease" of managing a candidate process.  In effect this led to a system in which people applying to large organisations were held at bay with template emails and auto-responses.

There are a great number of new systems for managing recruiting in a way that is more effective.  If you're still managing the hiring process for your organisation in a "spreadsheet of doom" now is a great time to change to one of the newer systems - Greenhouse, Lever or my ATS of choice Workable are all enabling their users to manage applicants through the process in amore human way. (Provided you use them in a human way - template emails that sound like template emails still suck).

To match the rise of the new round of applicant tracking systems (ATS) we've also seen new tools for other areas of hiring.  Recently we've seen large rounds of investment for many mobile based "job discovery" tools.  They all have the obligatory cool names like Jobr, Emjoyment and Blonk. The trait these apps all share is their appropriation of the Tinder style user interaction.  Like a job? Simply swipe and you've applied, or at least made contact with the posting company. It's so easy!  And that's my problem.

"It's a Match!" ...but does either side really care?

There are enough problems with application processes that are too lengthy but to remove or lower the barrier to application to a simple swipe, by extension, must also lower the thought process behind the application.  Does scrolling through job listings on your phone equate to the same thought and consideration on the candidate side as seeing an advert, being taken to the companies website to learn more and then making an application?  There is an innate disposability in the action of a single swipe, there is little effort either physically or mentally in idly swiping through career options.  As a recruiter, I want more than that.  I don't want the company I work for in a beauty parade held up for the swipes of someone looking for a Candy Crush Career...

Whilst the act of application, that is expressing interest in a job via one of these apps or polishing a LinkedIn in order to apply, fulfils the basic criteria of "job seeking" it does seem to overestimate the impact of technology on human behaviour.  The "ease" of use for the candidate is the equal and opposite reaction from the Recruiter side who is now given over to service of a greater number of applicants that haven't really gone to the lengths of application they normally would have.

There are a greater number of applicants and it becomes all the more difficult to find the signal in all that noise.  Those who are not at the coal face of recruiting often tout an increased volume of applications as beneficial.  As if throwing more bodies into the top of the funnel will result in the same level of quality and increased output from the same recruitment team.  Whilst this can be true it's only true if the quality is maintained. Scaling a recruitment effort is much more than opening yourself up to more applications. The best adverts for vacancies should cause potential applicants to opt in or out and gauge their own cultural fit.  The worst metric for the success of any recruitment effort is the raw metric of applications.

Perhaps at the root of all this is the transient psychology of a Tinder swipe. People are time deprived and the application of the swipe to jobs seems like a saving but in effect shifts a burden to a recruitment function that will only truly engage if they too swipe your application.  Monotonous, machine like swiping. Less and less meaningful engagement. Just as Tinder was a nail in the coffin of notions of romantic love perhaps Tinder-clones for recruitment are just at odds with my romantic views of candidate experience?

The Magic of the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator - The Technological Panaceas of Hiring that aren't.

Hiring is scary.

Hiring is a risky process that we all know can do irreparable damage if we get it wrong.  There are countless studies that all make the case that a false positive is more damaging that a false negative.  It's hard to "undo" a bad hire.  So how do we mitigate against this?

In the world of hiring there is an anti-pattern that the answer to the question of "how to hire?" is always answered better elsewhere.  We tell ourselves there exists a panacea for hiring.  There is a strategy to beat all others.  A technology so advanced that it alone is enabling a rival to mop up all that talent that's spilling all over the place.  In effect, in making strategic decisions about technology in hiring we have outsourced our facility for critical thought.

We believe the purveyors of these advances because they come with the trappings of authority. They quote statistics in polished powerpoint presentations, wield certificates with pseudo-scientific credentials or a hat.  So much of the decision making for strategy in recruitment has become about copying our competitors.  We assume that if something is working elsewhere it will work for us. Often this is based on information that is outdated and organisations don't change their processes to fit in with the new thinking.  Take for example the role of those "impossible to answer questions" pioneered by Microsoft and later Google.  It is now industry wide common knowledge that there is no correlation between the ability to answer these brainteaser questions and the ability to perform well in the role you are interviewing for.  Yet how many organisations are still asking them because they think they should be?  When was the last time you ran an audit of the questions asked at interview in your organisation?

Ever since companies have needed to hire people there have been providers offering them magic-bullet future predicting insights into their candidates.  With just a few answers to a test you can predict the suitability of a candidate for your company.  The granddaddy of these magical tests is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.

The test sorts it's takers into one of 16 different types each with a description that have now been misappropriated by HR departments to make wide ranging judgments about the suitability of prospective employees.  There have been many more erudite take downs of the lack of use of the MBTI this is a great place to start.

Here, as a primer, are a few reasons why the MBTI shouldn't be used in decision making when hiring -

• The test is based on the work of Carl Jung and uses his "types" in a way he said they shouldn't be used "Every individual is an exception to the rule," Jung wrote.
• Jung's principles were later adapted into a test by Katherine Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers, who had no formal training in psychology.
• The test uses false, limited binaries that force the taker into a either/or choice often on measurements where a better representation is that we are all somewhere on a spectrum.  Jung himself wrote "there is no such thing as a pure extravert or a pure introvert. Such a man would be in the lunatic asylum."
• As much as 50 percent of people arrive at a different result the second time they take a test, even if it's just five weeks later.

Lastly and perhaps the best first step to make when evaluating the claims of any HR holy grail is to look at who stands to benefit from the introduction of any new test, technology or methodology.  More often than not this benefit is either financial or one of prestige.  In the case of the Myers-Briggs there is a self supporting industry of those that pay for the licensing to become testers and then propagate the test's worth within their organisations thus increasing the need for their own services.  The real winner in the "success" of the MBTI is it's producer.

This is a truism for any of the latest crazes and bandwagon technologies that present themselves in the hiring space.  If someone stands to benefit then they will tell everyone that it's the best thing ever and will change the face of recruitment as we know it.  Be wary of that hyperbole for that way lies a trail a misspent dollars.

The hard truth that we all face is of course that there is no one perfect system.  There is no solution that can be purchased that will solve all your hiring ills.  There are organisations that make great strides in their own hiring and those stories have worth.  However, as an industry we shouldn't seek to become an inferior copy of another's success.  Instead we should ask ourselves what are those aspects that seem to work for others that we could trial and adopt at our own companies.  Listen to the stories of others but know that the stories themselves are not the path to knowledge. Knowing something requires research.

We should think critically about both the message and the messenger before going ahead with those decisions that will shape our ability to attract and retain talent for years to come (or at least until the next bandwagon we jump on).

So the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator isn't magic. It's that magical thinking that is a failure of critical thinking. Not thinking critically about a testing framework that you later use as a reference point to inform your decision making is an act of sabotage against your employer... but then I would say that I'm an ENTJ.

The Talent Hacker's Manifesto

Nick Marsh of Makeshift recently introduced the term Talent Hacking.  His contention was that hiring was broken and there existed a movement towards a new way of thinking.  How did it come to this?  Why is it that the world of recruitment can be called out as broken with no argument to the contrary?

Long ago in the mists of time and still the case at some less progressive organisations, recruitment was owned by HR.  From behind the dull-warmth of privacy screens and bloated software that referred to people as resources, recruiters began to stir.

Often regarded as the "noisy ones" on the HR floor, recruiters slowly began to emerge and be recognised as having a legitimate skill set.  A skill set that was distinct from their agency counterparts and yet not in keeping with the silo'ed silence of HR departments.   Moreover it was a skill set that was distinct from those of the HR generalists.  Over time the recruiters in more progressive organisations moved further away, diversified further and were allocated distinct budgets.  The dual pressures of speed from the business and for frugality from the finance department meant that in-house recruiters had to adapt the way they worked and began to become introspective - there wasn't just one skill of recruitment but many.

The role of a recruiter has been split in many organisations and so to reflect this and also to highlight there particular skills there are now many different job titles in use - from Sourcer, Headhunter, through Talent Acquisition Specialist, the Orwellian sounding Staffing Officer to Talent Scout there seems to be a new way to describe yourself each day.  So is "Talent Hacker" doomed to become the next in a long list of buzzword-like titles?

I hope not.

Hopefully we can avoid the pitfalls of buzzwordism if we make a clear distinction as to what a "Talent Hacker" actually is.  Firstly, I don't believe it's a job title at all.  Talent Hacking is a methodology.  At best it's a philosophical stance taken by a recruiter to adapt and experiment and at worst it's the sharing and usage of a number of disparate tools to expedite hiring.

In Nick's original article I was quoted as saying that “Hiring is still waterfall in an agile world”.  What I meant by that is that a "traditional" hiring process is slavish in adherence to accepted dogma. A job description is produced, it's disseminated through advertising channels, resultant applications are pushed through a pre-defined process and those lucky enough to have impressed will be hired.  In this process, there is no feedback, no learning and no space for creativity...worst of all there is no scope to delight the candidates.

With the Agile/Waterfall divide in mind, I propose that the Talent Hacking outlook can be formalised by borrowing (stealing) from the Agile Manifesto.  The Agile Manifesto is a statement of values for software developers, reinforcing those elements that are of greater value when developing software.  Similarly we can list those things that we feel are important when hiring, like this...

While there is value in the items on

the right, we value the items on the left more.

Hires over Processes

Too often in large recruiting organisations the pressure to maintain robust process and measure the performance of recruiters in the organisation means that we lose sight of the reason we're all there in the first place.  Measuring and rewarding things like number of candidates contacted or the number of contacts who made it to second stage is good practice but if the team isn't hiring it's all just "busy work".  A robust and fair (free of bias) process is important. Processes are ways of doing things that are more efficient - they must make a workload easier to complete or faster, you can think of them as collections of efficiencies.  If they do not add benefit they are no longer of value.  A lot of larger organisations hang on to process as though it was a life raft in a rising ocean of change, once the process is no longer effective (which you should periodically test for) abandon it and find a new more effective process.  A point here on "Best practices", to paraphrase Mary Poppendieck, author of "Lean Software Development" - Best practices are solutions to other people's problems that you may not have.  So much of the processes of recruitment are done simply because "it's how we did it at x company" or worse still "it's how I've read x company do it".  Process is great to ensure a level playing field and to expedite the flow of a candidate towards being hired - if it isn't doing either of these things it should be questioned and if found to be lacking changed.

Data over Anecdotal Evidence

The Talent Hacking approach loves data.   Sourcing, screening and shepherding a candidate towards being hired calls for a lot of decision making.  Decisions are better when supported by data.  Even if you cringe or break out in hives whenever someone says "Big Data" there is little doubt that the digital exhaust trails that people now leave behind them have made them easier to find.  Ask a tame recruiter you know if they can find your email address, I'll bet they can and it won't be from anywhere you remember writing it... Data supports a hiring plan, salary benchmarking, advertising response rates, recruiter performance, process improvement - it's all around us as recruiters.  Building a living breathing data set from which you can answer the future unknown questions will be one of the best investments for success as a recruiter.  Even better, a recruiter's standing in the business can be improved from the simple provision of the raw data.  The Talent Hacker will go further and provide insight to hiring managers - affecting change and having a direct effect on the success of the business.  It is the data that will enable the wider business, as consumers of the recruitment service, to answer the all important "Why?".  Why do we value this more than our own anecdotal evidence?  Anecdotal evidence is only ever the outcome of a single case, often it informs a bias or shapes action in a way that may have been right in a prior instance but not for the current one.  A Talent Hacker loves to hear the anecdotes of others because in unpacking them you can ask those questions that reveal what is "true" to an individual. They do have value, but I'll take the data.

Candidate experience over Corporate Responsibility

Beyond external marketing and websites, a recruiter is often the first human interaction anyone has with a company.  When they are doing their job well they are exemplars for the brand - impassioned spokespeople it's their enthusiasm that will bleed through in both their communication and deeds. So many recruiters at large organisations are a product of their environment they hide behind turrets built from template emails, missed phone calls and a fear of feedback.  An in-house recruiter walks a tightrope between advocating for the candidate and for the company at the same time, straying too far in one of these directions will not be beneficial.  A Talent Hacker takes a third position.  We must be aware that the talent war is over and that talent won.  Too many recruiters want to take an aloof position leaning towards the institutional arrogance that permeates some companies - "we don't have to provide feedback", "you're only worth a bland template email", "we have hundreds of candidates".  I'm sure this was a perfectly reasonable stance to take...until it wasn't.  You only have to look at Glassdoor.com to see reviews of interview processes that call out companies for their broken internal communication, ignorant recruiters and interminable, arduous processes.  For the Talent Hacker reading Glassdoor reviews is like a family owned restaurant being reviewed on TripAdvisor, scary as hell and a potential powder keg.  A recruitment process should feel like a personal service, the realisation that organisations are no longer all powerful and that bad reviews will stop people from applying hasn't fully permeated a lot of companies.  As humans we love to share, and embellish, a juicy story of bad service and this penchant for negativity can be mitigated by a recruiter doing their job well.  Recruiters should protect their employers they do have a duty to them, but if it comes at the neglect of hundreds of individuals whose only crime is to have applied for a job then it might be wiser to limit the damage and stop recruiting altogether.  

Responding to change over Following a plan

In life there are always events that are outside of our control.  As a recruiter we are often either privy to insider information or at the mercy circumstances outside of our control.  From hiring freezes, through acqui-hires to redundancies there are many business events that impact a recruiter.  The Talent Hacker must be aware of this and work hard to ensure that all parties, hiring managers, team, wider business and candidates are given the information where appropriate.  Working at the coal-face of recruitment often turns up interesting information that could be of great use to other areas of the business, if you don't forge these feedback loops you are effectively losing out.  It can be simple things like competitor hiring strategy or market rates rising in demand for a particular skill, however it can also be large and impactful learnings that should be used to adapt and change strategy - mass redundancies at a competitor, a new product launch or even rumours of mergers and acquisitions, candidates reveal a lot of information that could be useful - not listening to this let alone not reacting to it is missing out.  Change can be a valuable tool and resistance stemming from traditional models of yearly planning can only leave an organisation exposed to risk.  A company I once worked for lost 32 senior developers within three months - did they stick to a static hiring plan?  Of course not! ...but the changes shouldn't have to be that drastic to trigger a period of re-evaluation.  The Talent Hacker doesn't seek to control but instead knows that change will happen, they are not wedded to alternate contingencies but rely on experiences to suggest different paths to follow if the need occurs.

I like the appreciation of a new wave of recruitment thinking.  There have been pockets of genius in the underbelly of the people hunting game that have been hidden for too long.  From the boolean greats who sift through data to find that one unknown diamond of a candidate to the recruiters who do so much more than their remit, trusted advisors to candidates, hiring, housing and relocating their candidate's families and pets as they go.  Perhaps the Talent Hacker flag is one we can all unite under,   recruiters and candidates might be all the better off for it.

This manifesto is by no means an exhaustive list of what is to be a Talent Hacker and I welcome input to clarify the definition further.  By offering a definition we can at least trigger the debate and hopefully give the label more meaning.  

The Itchy Security Blanket of Recruitment Metrics

The rise of more intuitive technology enabling the recruitment process has made for an interesting corollary - a rise in an organisation's ability to collect and report data connected to the recruitment process.  The increasing data driven programmatic approach to recruitment can do much to aid in the design and selection of a recruitment strategy.  Seemingly small changes can be tracked to measure their impact on the success or failure rates of a decision.

The growth in our ability to collect these metrics has been matched by a hunger within the stakeholder set as a whole.  Once a hiring manager has seen a report that gives seemingly scientific insight into the hiring process it will be almost impossible to revert to something which grants them less insight.  I'm not advocating that we take away metrics for these managers rather than we give them the access and supply the relevant context.  The greatest danger of data collection lies not in the information, but in its interpretation.  

So what metrics are appropriate to measure? What metrics can offer us certainty without falling into the the traps of selection or confirmation bias?  There are already a lot of hyperbolic blog posts like "The Top 10 Metrics You Must Have" or "7 Recruitment Metrics to Win" these miss the point.  The metrics of recruitment are best used for experimentation - tied to the continuous improvement of the team.  If you are producing metrics that will sit unopened in a spreadsheet to appease a hiring manager you are guilty of security blanket metrics.  Whilst you will feel all warm and fuzzy because you can prove that some *thing* is happening they will be of no real practical value, like butterflies pinned to a board underglass, nice to look at but not useful.

So whats the alternative?  When done correctly the term "metrics" is a misnomer.  The gathering of data around recruitment will give you a dataset which you can apply to provide insight into historical performance and to measure impact of the specific efficacy of projects the team undertakes.  In this way it's possible to see results in real time - does that new advert copy lead to more applications? You can see that! Which website is best to advertise on? You can test that! Did that rival companies announcement affect your response rate? You'll be able to see!  Did adding that photo of a cat to your website make it better?  Of course it did! You don't need metrics to tell you that!

What can't metrics do?  Predict the future.  In many of the articles I've read about recruitment metrics I've seen a large number of lofty claims about prediction.  All the while these claims are made without noting the limitations of the dataset we have access to.  It's the measurement of this dataset that will be the most effective use of business value not on fortune teller style inference of outcomes.  Statements like "we had 1000 applicants in 2013, so this year we will have 1500" are always going to be more wishful thinking than informed prediction.  Metrics can help in planning for the future but knowing the limitations of the basis of those predictions is key.  If we aren't aware of the limits of prediction we risk undoing the good that data can do and reaching for the crystal ball.  

In a future post I'll list the what and why of the metrics I like to measure.  Both for tracking team and individual performance within the team.  Hopefully you'll recognise it's a list high on building a dataset with experimentation in mind and low on fluffy feel goods and blame dodging.

Innovation in Sourcing - The Poaching Phone

I recently posted on the wealth of innovative techniques available to a forward thinking sourcing departments who are targeting known individuals in competitor organisations.  A Dubai based advertising agency, FP7, gives an object lesson in how to do this well and the direct return on investment they made from using this approach.

"We set out to expand our creative department, but hiring talent in the region is a constant struggle. Headhunters charge exuberant fees, so we did our homework and captured the attention of the region's best talent using the ultimate creative recruiter - The Poaching Phone. Faux industry Self help books were personalised to potential recruits and demonstrated how they could advance their career with us. Inside each book, an ordinary phone was concealed in die-cut pages and programmed with only one contact, our ECDs number. We then sent it out to infiltrate Dubai's top Ad Agencies. Within a week, we received the phone calls we were hoping for. A month later, we had 4 new members join our creative family. In the end, we saved 97% of our projected recruitment costs with a simple phone."

Four hires and a 97% reduction in projected costs make this a obvious success in the face of the "spray and pray" mentality of some sourcing strategies.

On Hiring Technical Women

I believe that even in my lifetime the advances that have been made in technology have been a great leveller.  Technology has enabled so much collaboration across so many different boundaries, across culture, geography, age, race and gender.  Even in my own career I have worked alongside teams from all over the world, on one particular project we had Brazilian, Chinese, and Dutch developers, working with an Australian project manager and a business analyst from Portugal working from a London office for a US based client.  They were a range of ages, races and genders.  I think the software they produced was better for the team's diversity.  Their range of viewpoints and backgrounds enabled them to better empathise with the eventual users of the software they were building.

I've been incredibly fortunate as the employers I've worked for not only recognised the importance of diverse teams but were also prepared to invest both the time and sometimes the money that was necessary to source candidates from non-traditional backgrounds.  The industry is already well aware that there is a shortage of technical women.  There are some brilliant initiatives in this area and most importantly some truly inspirational female role models for those entering employment.  I've been exceptionally lucky to work with just a few of them.  It seems as though the more forward thinking of employers have woken up to the realisation that a diverse workforce is a boon to productivity and the collective intelligence of teams.  These are leaps forward and while we should keep striving and not become complacent it is in the implementation of these initiatives that I have noticed some actions which are increasingly counter-productive.  Some recruiters, despite the best intentions, are doing more to alienate potential female candidates than encourage them.

I do not know how women feel about the hiring process, nor do I believe they think as a collective hive-mind, so whenever I get the chance I ask them for feedback.  How was the hiring process? What did they enjoy? What could I improve?  Questions I ask of all the candidates I shepherd through their recruitment process.  At a previous employer we had a kind of focus group of female developers and business analysts set to explore one questions "how can we hire more females?".  Whilst there were lot of ideas in the room there was one recurring theme that often stopped potential ideas in their tracks - no one wanted to feel or make others feel that the bar was being lowered for them.  They didn't want women only interview days, they didn't want woman-targeted advertising and they didn't want to be commoditised with the offer of increased referral bonuses for female candidates.

It is in trying to work against the stereotype of the "programmer" that recruiters often fall into the trap of pandering to an equally divisive stereotype.  Whilst stand-out cases of obvious crassness make news, like the ad posted to the Ruby User group offering female co-workers as a perk or at the other end of the spectrum LinkedIn's ban of a job ad showing a female web developer because it was "offensive", it's apparent that even when the industry thinks it's doing the right thing often it just gets weird.  Pink adverts, adverts featuring photos of lip stick and high heels (really) there have been some truly odd attempts to attract female candidates when filtered though the lens of a recruiting department.

Recently I met with a representative from a university women's group. She described a meeting with the Diversity Recruiters at a large investment bank.  They wanted to be involved with the women's society and wondered what would be the best thing they could do.  The women's group leader suggested that they might like to sponsor a scholarship for one of the female students.  A relatively modest award would ensure that a student would be "theirs", branded as such and available for publicity. This would also ensure that the lucky recipient would be relieved of some financial burden, maybe give up a part-time job, devote more time to study, even fair better because of it.  The Diversity Recruiters didn't agree that this would be the best use of the money, they wanted in their words a greater "return on investment".  So what was their suggestion?

Afternoon tea in a posh hotel.  The budget? The same as the scholarship.  This is a perfect example of not knowing your audience, of not understanding or at least not empathising.  The twee sensibilities of an HR department woefully out of touch with the audience they were trying to engage.    A true opportunity to help was squandered in favour of cream teas.  It's exactly the brand of corporatism that sees a company say they do work for the environment because they have a photo of the CEO planting a tree on their website.  It may well be benign but it's also pointless.  Gender like any diversity characteristic is too often treated as a checkbox item. It's as though some recruiters are more looking for Pokemon than people.

So how do I hire female developers?

I aim to hire highly-skilled, passionate people.  The adverts I place aren't for "Ninjas" or "Rockstars" or other "brogrammer" terms,  they are for software engineers, for people who like solving problems and who like having their work make an impact.  So how do I ensure I'm reaching out to technical women too?  I source, a lot.  As women area smaller minority of the greater technical population you have to look through more of that population to find them.  It's labour intensive but they are there you just have to look.  I have still run women only hackathons, and relied on the advice of organisations like Women in Technology and advertised in media aimed at a female audience, even increased the bounty for the successful referral of a female developer.  However, as a recruiter, first and foremost the thing I try to do is appeal to a passion for technology and find the best people I can.  If I'm looking for highly skilled people who are passionate about technology I know that I'm going to find some females in that group and I'm going to do my best to make sure that when I do talk to them it's with a relevant and interesting opportunity...but then that's what I want for every candidate.

Hacking the application process - A cheat mode for Developers

In a previous post I talked about resumes from candidates that applied direct being seen as secondary to those candidates who were sourced by internal recruiters.  In some organisations recruiters will go out of their way to extol the virtues of a candidate to a hiring manager simply because they were hard to find or it took a long time to tease a CV out of the candidate.  All this is at the cost of a potentially more suitable, talented CV that is sat in an applicant tracking system, dusty and unloved.

How can you get that in-house recruiter who seems to be ignoring you to advocate for you in the same way?  How can you be sure that your resume is presented in the same way, in that flurry of excitement?

You can't.  Sorry.  There are hundreds of reasons that the recruiter hasn't go back to you, none of them good enough to warrant ignoring you.

This is of course understandably bad news, but there is a way around this and perhaps it will give you a better insight into the company culture and the role you are applying for.  First step research the company you want to apply for on LinkedIn.  In the same way a  recruiter would find your profile on LinkedIn, look for someone who would be a peer or a manager of a team you'd like to join.  Contact them and ask them about their role, ask them all the questions that you didn't get the answers to by reading the job description.  Mention that you'd like to apply, ask the person you're in contact with to look over your CV.

Ideally the short cut you are taking is to game the internal referral process of your chosen target company and have an existing employee advocate for you.  The pressure you are really exploiting here is the perceived imbalance of power between the HR department and "the business".  The cachet that is attached to a CV that is referred is often enough to force the attention of recruiters as there is a pressure to be answerable to the employee who handed the CV to them, in short the process will be expedited.  Doing this won't increase your skills or suitability for the job but it will mean you are at least seen and considered, not left to languish in an inbox.

For recruiters who feel I may be doing them a disservice in encouraging this sort of behaviour I'd offer a little by way of explanation.  Build relationships with your hiring managers, communicate with them effectively and you'll find they are by far the best arbiters of prospective candidates - and ultimately they are on your side.

On Becoming Discoverable - advice for job applicants

Eventually there comes a time in every period of employment that an employee starts to imagine the greener pastures that exist in other offices.  It's not that they've been courted by an unscrupulous recruiter, it's not that they are moving town or countries, it's not even that they've been fired for stealing stationery supplies and selling them on eBay. They've decided it's time to leave and it's on their own terms.

They lovingly craft themselves a new CV. They toy with the idea of of a video resume, or an infographic to show their creativity...then fire up Word and smoosh their details into a template.  They search the internet for a new role. They trawl LinkedIn and then they  find something; a glimmer of what might be.  They measure themselves against the requirements, ask friends about the company, research using Glassdoor and finally they click "Apply".

Then... nothing.

They were right for the role.  All the requisite skills, even a few extra ones that the hiring managers would love. So why are not being courted, loved, made to feel like the beautiful and unique snowflake they are by a whole gaggle of in-house recruiters?  Why are they lost, trapped in a black hole, ignored?

The answer...because they applied.

In many of the recruitment teams I have managed to date there is a odd behavioural pattern that I have noticed more than once.  Those CV's that have arrived through direct application are not as valued or deemed inferior to those that have been head hunted or sourced through some circuitous route.  This leads to a selection bias on the part of the recruiter to over state the suitability of a candidate that has been sourced through toil and denigrate the suitability of those candidates who apply directly because of their availability.  Because we have been told many times that the "good" candidates "aren't looking" or are "passive", those that are active must be inferior. This despite metrics that directly show that 10 to 15% of hires had come through direct applications!

There are many reasons why this could have happened.  The "groupthink" or herd behaviour of the team seeking to emulate a strong performer, a little cultural inheritance from a previous job or even an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect - the recruiter valuing their own perceived skills over that which lacked their "superior" touch.

It may not be the fault of the recruiter.  Some of the organisations I have seen use an applicant tracking system that deposits CV's of applicants to be viewed into "bins" or "buckets".  There has to be some linguistic reinforcement of perceived value here.  When I think of the contents of these inanimate objects I don't really see it positively.  In British English a "bin" is where we put rubbish or trash and a "bucket" is used for cleaning, it's association is with dirt or grime.  How many bins and buckets are filled with gold, or diamonds, or unicorns!  Institutionally we can do something to aid the shaping of behaviour here, why not refer to an internal talent "pool" and try to excise the negativity that could aid prejudgement?

So what can a candidate do?  My advice to a candidate looking for work is to make themselves discoverable.  Prior to applying, try to ensure that you have a footprint that means you can be found on the internet.  Google yourself.  Know where it is that recruiters will look for people with your skills.  For the developers and software engineers that I recruit there are a wealth of venues to utilise.  I am assuming you're OK with surrendering a little privacy to be discovered...

Firstly, LinkedIn.  Have a profile, make that profile detailed, feel cheap and dirty with all the spam you'll get you can always shutter it or delete it all together when you've found that dream job.  For a growing majority of recruiters LinkedIn is the first port of call, for some it's their only port of call.

Secondly, as a developer or an software engineer if you don't have an account on Stack Overflow you should. Any forum which is monetised for recruiters is a sure sign that recruiters are there and searching for candidates.

Thirdly, broaden your other social media footprint.  Have a G+ account, have a Twitter account, take down the drunken photos on Facebook because the more savvy recruiters out there will be looking here for you too.  If you list a job title or a company this will make you more likely to be found - check that "other" message inbox from time to time too!

Even if you only did these few things, pretty low effort, you'd be on the radar of more recruiters more of the time.  Now add to this your own blog, open source software contributions, your own website to further aggregate this stuff and you'll be surrounded in no time, of course when you've found that dream job you can take back some privacy and close or hide these accounts - you've only had to deal with those rascally recruiters on your terms and when you wanted to, that has to be better than sending that CV into the void, only for it to land in a "bucket", right?