Back to regular blogging soon!
Showing posts with label innovation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label innovation. Show all posts
Monday, 23 March 2015
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!
Monday, 12 January 2015
The Mis-Match of Algorithmic Recruitment
It's the not so distant future.
A mobile app linked to a wrist mounted wearable wakes you, at precisely the right moment. It monitors your sleep patterns and pulse rate and greets you each morning with a chipper "Go get 'em!". You dress and get ready to leave the house, the fridge has emailed to remind you that you'll need to buy milk on your return. You lock the door behind you with a swipe of your cell phone, keys are no more. Outside, you step into a self driving car and take a different route to the usual commute - the car knew about the traffic before you did. You arrive at work and boxes are moved into the previously vacant office next to yours. You weren't aware of a new co-worker. There were no interviews. They were algorithmically selected from the passive talent pool. Kept warm on a diet of Pinterest photos of the office and Youtube videos of kittens selected to be the most humanising for the Mega Corp you happen to work in...
As far as predictions of the future go the vision I offer above is hardly advanced. The technology exists for the wearables, the Internet of Things and the self driving cars, it's just that last part that seems incongruent.
In the growing adoption of technology for HR departments seeking to differentiate their sourcing efforts, the idea of algorithmic matching is seen to be the magic bullet in the "War for Talent". Beyond the clichéd war metaphors and gullibility of HR Tech buyers is the future of recruitment to be left to the robots?
Technology has made the discipline of talent acquisition better. We've moved far beyond the data entry and green screen databases of a decade ago. As a modern workforce migrates to online services so their digital footprint increases making them all the more easy for the new breed of sourcers to find. Now the future, according to some, looks set to be the automated addition of new workers and a touted increase in the skill of selection. I'm no Luddite but I can't help thinking this is a version of a technological utopianism whose primary supporters are those that seek to benefit financially from the adoption of the technology in question.
So many of the products available that claim to have solved matching are the same providers who don't recognise some of the fatal flaws that their products exacerbate. The primary example of this is the reliance on the quality of data on both sides necessary for a match. The majority of matching systems are parsing CV's and then matching against a job description analysed in the same way. This is exactly the limited key word matching that these systems say is so weak. Even when other data are relied upon to beef up the input, suggestions of LinkedIn profiles and even LinkedIn endorsements are laughable. Especially in the case of unverifiable LinkedIn endorsements like mine for "Midwifery" and "Cheese Making". Of course I'm totally brilliant at both of these things...
Even the more advanced of the matching algorithms that incorporate some elements of semantic search (context of search, location, intent, variation of words, synonyms, generalised and specialised queries, concept matching and natural language processing) are constrained both by the data the candidates provide and the job description or criteria the employer matches against. Anyone who works in recruiting will be able to quickly see that both of these sources of data are flawed and subject to constant change. Data in both these areas can be knowingly falsified, incomplete and always out of date.
This data is inherently flawed because people themselves are inherently flawed. Candidates will always seek to portray themselves in the best light, hiring managers will always add some extra "nice to haves" or even make the work of two people into one mythical job description. A matching algorithm is forced to make sense of too many moving parts and results will suffer.
In moving towards this style of recommendation the people in the processes are reduced to the status of commodities. Subtle nuance is lost and the chance for innovation curtailed by inelastic parameters. People are not a product. When Amazon presents you with a book based on your buying preferences it has only to reckon with your fickle, transient tastes. A book doesn't reject you because it feels it's too far to get to your house, or because the other books on the shelf don't feel your reputation is strong enough, a book doesn't want to work from is own home or have a counter offer from a series of rival readers...people do.
Recruiting is a constant stream of edge cases. Whilst a matching engine might work for less complex roles at large numbers, it won't help you compete in winning that all important "War for Talent" you were so desperately spending your way out of. The current level of technology is no match for the ability of a good recruiter. This is not an indictment of the technology, it's an acknowledgement of the greater problem that exists in the institutionally flawed HR departments and Recruiting processes the world over. Using a tool like this to gain another datapoint to inform decision making is a valid use - it's the shame of HR Tech that every new tool is paraded as "the answer". If the industry could wean itself off it's obsession with the novel and shiny we might be able to tackle some of these issues at the root cause and realise that the skills we learnt whilst toiling at our green screens might not be entirely redundant.
A mobile app linked to a wrist mounted wearable wakes you, at precisely the right moment. It monitors your sleep patterns and pulse rate and greets you each morning with a chipper "Go get 'em!". You dress and get ready to leave the house, the fridge has emailed to remind you that you'll need to buy milk on your return. You lock the door behind you with a swipe of your cell phone, keys are no more. Outside, you step into a self driving car and take a different route to the usual commute - the car knew about the traffic before you did. You arrive at work and boxes are moved into the previously vacant office next to yours. You weren't aware of a new co-worker. There were no interviews. They were algorithmically selected from the passive talent pool. Kept warm on a diet of Pinterest photos of the office and Youtube videos of kittens selected to be the most humanising for the Mega Corp you happen to work in...
As far as predictions of the future go the vision I offer above is hardly advanced. The technology exists for the wearables, the Internet of Things and the self driving cars, it's just that last part that seems incongruent.
In the growing adoption of technology for HR departments seeking to differentiate their sourcing efforts, the idea of algorithmic matching is seen to be the magic bullet in the "War for Talent". Beyond the clichéd war metaphors and gullibility of HR Tech buyers is the future of recruitment to be left to the robots?
Technology has made the discipline of talent acquisition better. We've moved far beyond the data entry and green screen databases of a decade ago. As a modern workforce migrates to online services so their digital footprint increases making them all the more easy for the new breed of sourcers to find. Now the future, according to some, looks set to be the automated addition of new workers and a touted increase in the skill of selection. I'm no Luddite but I can't help thinking this is a version of a technological utopianism whose primary supporters are those that seek to benefit financially from the adoption of the technology in question.
So many of the products available that claim to have solved matching are the same providers who don't recognise some of the fatal flaws that their products exacerbate. The primary example of this is the reliance on the quality of data on both sides necessary for a match. The majority of matching systems are parsing CV's and then matching against a job description analysed in the same way. This is exactly the limited key word matching that these systems say is so weak. Even when other data are relied upon to beef up the input, suggestions of LinkedIn profiles and even LinkedIn endorsements are laughable. Especially in the case of unverifiable LinkedIn endorsements like mine for "Midwifery" and "Cheese Making". Of course I'm totally brilliant at both of these things...
Even the more advanced of the matching algorithms that incorporate some elements of semantic search (context of search, location, intent, variation of words, synonyms, generalised and specialised queries, concept matching and natural language processing) are constrained both by the data the candidates provide and the job description or criteria the employer matches against. Anyone who works in recruiting will be able to quickly see that both of these sources of data are flawed and subject to constant change. Data in both these areas can be knowingly falsified, incomplete and always out of date.
This data is inherently flawed because people themselves are inherently flawed. Candidates will always seek to portray themselves in the best light, hiring managers will always add some extra "nice to haves" or even make the work of two people into one mythical job description. A matching algorithm is forced to make sense of too many moving parts and results will suffer.
In moving towards this style of recommendation the people in the processes are reduced to the status of commodities. Subtle nuance is lost and the chance for innovation curtailed by inelastic parameters. People are not a product. When Amazon presents you with a book based on your buying preferences it has only to reckon with your fickle, transient tastes. A book doesn't reject you because it feels it's too far to get to your house, or because the other books on the shelf don't feel your reputation is strong enough, a book doesn't want to work from is own home or have a counter offer from a series of rival readers...people do.
Recruiting is a constant stream of edge cases. Whilst a matching engine might work for less complex roles at large numbers, it won't help you compete in winning that all important "War for Talent" you were so desperately spending your way out of. The current level of technology is no match for the ability of a good recruiter. This is not an indictment of the technology, it's an acknowledgement of the greater problem that exists in the institutionally flawed HR departments and Recruiting processes the world over. Using a tool like this to gain another datapoint to inform decision making is a valid use - it's the shame of HR Tech that every new tool is paraded as "the answer". If the industry could wean itself off it's obsession with the novel and shiny we might be able to tackle some of these issues at the root cause and realise that the skills we learnt whilst toiling at our green screens might not be entirely redundant.
Tuesday, 6 January 2015
"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!
Wednesday, 10 September 2014
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.
Wednesday, 27 August 2014
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.
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?
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? |
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?
Monday, 4 August 2014
The Magic of the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator - The Technological Panaceas of Hiring that aren't.
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.
Wednesday, 16 July 2014
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...
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...
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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.
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.
Friday, 25 April 2014
Metrics that Matter
Firstly apologies to those of you that aren't quite as geeky about the numbers of recruitment as I am, I'll be back to ranting about the misuse of Pinterest for recruitment soon. As I promised previously I wanted to give a little insight into those individual statistics that go to make up the metrics I use (or those I like to see) when recruiting. Gathering this information isn't about producing a report simply to prove effort. It is only the most unengaged stakeholder who can take solace in knowing that candidate and recruiters are somewhere in the building... Gathering this seemingly disparate data points, in a consistent format (more on this later) is about creating a dataset that is alive and available to answer questions that may arise later... regardless of what those questions might be...
So what are the basics? Those elements that you have to capture and whether that's in an ATS, a spreadsheet or typed up and popped in one of those old-timey filing cabinets.
Name, gender - All of your candidates will have a name, even if they have just one like a Brazilian footballer or Madonna they still have a name. You should decide in advance on a format for writing these names capitalization, hyphenation etc this is to facilitate later use of names in mail merge or batch operations - candidates don't want to receive an email for "MAtthw BUCKLAND" so spell it right and you won't have to change 1000 name spellings at a later date.
Gender as a metric is of particular interest to me. I've always worked in technical recruitment and it's an industry where females and transgendered people are under represented. This metric can be combined with source to know which sources are productive for diversity goals and with the date ranges to know if and where candidates excel or fall down in your recruitment process. This can facilitate later discussion and provide great evidence for changing processes later.
Role - the role the candidate applies for...this one really is basic to be able to slice numbers of total applicants by role, I hope everyone does at least this. If not I guess they just tie CV's to the back of kittens and let them lose...
Gate Dates - Not Match.com for Farmers, this is the notation of the dates that a candidate moves through the hiring process. Date of Application, Date of Phone Screen, Date of First On-site Interview all the way through to Date of Offer, Verbal Acceptance, Written Acceptance and Start Date. GET ALL THE DATES! So why track all these dates? These date ranges can be used to answer a multitude of questions. With values in these ranges reports can be compiled that show total length of process, drop-out ratios, expose bottlenecks in the process, expose waiting times and hold-ups, track notice periods... basically everything. The date ranges and days elapsed are the bread and butter of recruitment reporting. Do you currently know the average length of your interview process? Does it vary a great deal? Why is that? It's the interrogation of these dates that will give you those answers and perhaps when you have enough of an historical dataset predict time to hire of for future capacity planning... all for putting some dates in a spreadsheet or clicking those little calendar icons in your swanky new ATS! Brilliant!
Source - Again a simple one, but it bears repeating, the source is how the candidate arrived in your recruitment process. This should break down the source into broad categories that can tell at a glance what is a good source (a lot of quality candidates) a weak source (few candidates) or a bad source (lots of irrelevant candidates). Example sources should differentiate between the "How" of the source too e.g. not just "LinkedIn" correct reporting should be "LinkedIn Search" and "LinkedIn Advert", this will enable you to distinguish between an active candidate application versus a directly sourced passive candidate.
Secondary Source - Some sources may require extra insight, you might need to know more for a later report. If you have a primary source as "Event" this could be the particular Meetup, conference or pub you met them at. A primary source of "Agency" might have the secondary source of the agency's name, for referrals it could be the refering employees name... remember they all have one...
Country of Residence - I also like to track where a particular candidate is based this has multiple reasons, one might be for immigration purposes to highlight to internal teams where visa constraints may be an issue or delay a start date, a second reason could be to track individual sourcing efforts from a particular country... best of all most reports can include a lovely map showing where candidates came from...the prettiest metric :)
Contact Details - This should be the most obvious but still I see people finding value in the wrong things. We all should know that a direct contact is better than a message delivered through a third party. Simply put a telephone call or a direct email address are better than a LinkedIn Inmail. If you only use LinkedIn to contact candidates and leaving it at that you're doing it wrong.
Last Employer - Want to know your pulling power? Doing some competitor analysis? Then you'll need to know where your candidates are currently working.
Recruiter - Who found the candidate and who is shepherding them through the process? It's important that I'm not noting this to provide a productivity report for managerial consumption. Unless all the members of the team are hiring for the same role in the same geography there is little to be gained from a direct comparison. Raw numbers alone, stripped of context are not an aid. They are a great example of one of the great flaws in gathering data - quantity isn't always preferable to quality.
Date of Last Contact - One of the consistent complaints and killers of candidate experience is the lack of timely feedback. Even giving a candidate a short "no news yet" will pay dividends if you later wish to offer against a less communicative rival. To overstate, if you track the last date you contacted a list of candidates you can very easily automate an email letting them know what's going on and when they'll get feedback.
Status - Decide on a glossary of terms that best fit your process, get the hiring managers involved in this process too. Phone Screen, First Interview, Second Interview..etc. Have as many of these as you feel you need. Counting each of these each week will give you a very rapid view of the overall pipeline. Hiring managers will love this, full on warm and fuzzy feelings. Too often the work of the recruiter can look like a dark art - they go and stare at a screen and people magically appear for interviews - a weekly pipeline report just illustrating the numbers of potential candidates at each stage will calm even the most rabid of hiring manager.
There are more things to track of course and when real value can be derived from the collation of this data you'll find it quite addictive. Best of all, when you start to move on from thinking the collection of data is just to describe the current status to instead thinking that you are creating a living, growing dataset that can be used to answer questions that haven't yet been thought of... you'll start to see why metrics really do matter.
So what are the basics? Those elements that you have to capture and whether that's in an ATS, a spreadsheet or typed up and popped in one of those old-timey filing cabinets.
Name, gender - All of your candidates will have a name, even if they have just one like a Brazilian footballer or Madonna they still have a name. You should decide in advance on a format for writing these names capitalization, hyphenation etc this is to facilitate later use of names in mail merge or batch operations - candidates don't want to receive an email for "MAtthw BUCKLAND" so spell it right and you won't have to change 1000 name spellings at a later date.
Gender as a metric is of particular interest to me. I've always worked in technical recruitment and it's an industry where females and transgendered people are under represented. This metric can be combined with source to know which sources are productive for diversity goals and with the date ranges to know if and where candidates excel or fall down in your recruitment process. This can facilitate later discussion and provide great evidence for changing processes later.
Role - the role the candidate applies for...this one really is basic to be able to slice numbers of total applicants by role, I hope everyone does at least this. If not I guess they just tie CV's to the back of kittens and let them lose...
Gate Dates - Not Match.com for Farmers, this is the notation of the dates that a candidate moves through the hiring process. Date of Application, Date of Phone Screen, Date of First On-site Interview all the way through to Date of Offer, Verbal Acceptance, Written Acceptance and Start Date. GET ALL THE DATES! So why track all these dates? These date ranges can be used to answer a multitude of questions. With values in these ranges reports can be compiled that show total length of process, drop-out ratios, expose bottlenecks in the process, expose waiting times and hold-ups, track notice periods... basically everything. The date ranges and days elapsed are the bread and butter of recruitment reporting. Do you currently know the average length of your interview process? Does it vary a great deal? Why is that? It's the interrogation of these dates that will give you those answers and perhaps when you have enough of an historical dataset predict time to hire of for future capacity planning... all for putting some dates in a spreadsheet or clicking those little calendar icons in your swanky new ATS! Brilliant!
Source - Again a simple one, but it bears repeating, the source is how the candidate arrived in your recruitment process. This should break down the source into broad categories that can tell at a glance what is a good source (a lot of quality candidates) a weak source (few candidates) or a bad source (lots of irrelevant candidates). Example sources should differentiate between the "How" of the source too e.g. not just "LinkedIn" correct reporting should be "LinkedIn Search" and "LinkedIn Advert", this will enable you to distinguish between an active candidate application versus a directly sourced passive candidate.
Secondary Source - Some sources may require extra insight, you might need to know more for a later report. If you have a primary source as "Event" this could be the particular Meetup, conference or pub you met them at. A primary source of "Agency" might have the secondary source of the agency's name, for referrals it could be the refering employees name... remember they all have one...
Country of Residence - I also like to track where a particular candidate is based this has multiple reasons, one might be for immigration purposes to highlight to internal teams where visa constraints may be an issue or delay a start date, a second reason could be to track individual sourcing efforts from a particular country... best of all most reports can include a lovely map showing where candidates came from...the prettiest metric :)
Contact Details - This should be the most obvious but still I see people finding value in the wrong things. We all should know that a direct contact is better than a message delivered through a third party. Simply put a telephone call or a direct email address are better than a LinkedIn Inmail. If you only use LinkedIn to contact candidates and leaving it at that you're doing it wrong.
Last Employer - Want to know your pulling power? Doing some competitor analysis? Then you'll need to know where your candidates are currently working.
Recruiter - Who found the candidate and who is shepherding them through the process? It's important that I'm not noting this to provide a productivity report for managerial consumption. Unless all the members of the team are hiring for the same role in the same geography there is little to be gained from a direct comparison. Raw numbers alone, stripped of context are not an aid. They are a great example of one of the great flaws in gathering data - quantity isn't always preferable to quality.
Date of Last Contact - One of the consistent complaints and killers of candidate experience is the lack of timely feedback. Even giving a candidate a short "no news yet" will pay dividends if you later wish to offer against a less communicative rival. To overstate, if you track the last date you contacted a list of candidates you can very easily automate an email letting them know what's going on and when they'll get feedback.
Status - Decide on a glossary of terms that best fit your process, get the hiring managers involved in this process too. Phone Screen, First Interview, Second Interview..etc. Have as many of these as you feel you need. Counting each of these each week will give you a very rapid view of the overall pipeline. Hiring managers will love this, full on warm and fuzzy feelings. Too often the work of the recruiter can look like a dark art - they go and stare at a screen and people magically appear for interviews - a weekly pipeline report just illustrating the numbers of potential candidates at each stage will calm even the most rabid of hiring manager.
There are more things to track of course and when real value can be derived from the collation of this data you'll find it quite addictive. Best of all, when you start to move on from thinking the collection of data is just to describe the current status to instead thinking that you are creating a living, growing dataset that can be used to answer questions that haven't yet been thought of... you'll start to see why metrics really do matter.
Thursday, 27 March 2014
Innovation in Job Hunting - Engaging the Recruiter
I always seem to harping on about what employers can do to encourage engagement from talented candidates. Today I came across reddit user Leah, who goes by Pastlightspeed, who posted photos of her recent application to two advertising agencies for an intern position. It's hard to know how to standout in this increasingly competitive market and whilst Leah skirts the line between impressive and gimmicky I think the end result is both pleasing and communicates her potential well.
This isn't the first time I've seen this type of thing and whilst it lends itself well to creative professions I think there's scope to produce this kind of thing for other disciplines too. In the past I've seen resumes submitted in LaTeX for researcher roles, as an API for an engineering role and a candidate at Facebook sent a single shoe - the accompanying message stating "...if the shoe fits". All three stood out and all three got interviewed. Of course you still have to interview well but thinking about the application process in a creative way could give you an advantage over other applicants and may help to pique the interest of even the most jaded in-house recruiters.
This isn't the first time I've seen this type of thing and whilst it lends itself well to creative professions I think there's scope to produce this kind of thing for other disciplines too. In the past I've seen resumes submitted in LaTeX for researcher roles, as an API for an engineering role and a candidate at Facebook sent a single shoe - the accompanying message stating "...if the shoe fits". All three stood out and all three got interviewed. Of course you still have to interview well but thinking about the application process in a creative way could give you an advantage over other applicants and may help to pique the interest of even the most jaded in-house recruiters.
Wednesday, 19 March 2014
On "Culture" - “You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means”.
How many job adverts currently advertise a "great culture", "a start-up culture" or a "Google-like culture"? It seems as though the only company not shouting about how Google-like their culture is are Google themselves. It's a particular bugbear of mine at the moment because it's not only a trite cliché it's also meaningless.
"Culture" as it is currently being used in job adverts has come to mean little more than a perk. "Salary, Bonus, Life Insurance, Great Culture". Whilst this doesn't make the top ten in my all time annoyances with how jobs are advertised it does make the mistake of entirely missing the point. If the "culture" is a differentiator why wouldn't you tell a prospective candidate about it in lavish detail? I think the issue here might be one of misunderstanding of the term.
So what is culture? Broadly defined the culture of a company is the ideas, customs and social behaviour of a particular group or society. These are the building blocks, the elemental stage of what we collectively called culture. Without description of these ideas, customs and behaviours and why they are good bad or of no interest to a candidate mentioning it is redundant.
So what isn't culture? Another facet of a lack of description in a job advert is a description of the wrong things a quick scan of well intentioned descriptions lists "beers in the office", "foosball" and "free food". These things are not culture. Just like empty pyramids and papyrus scrolls are not the sum total of Ancient Egypt any more so than the Parthenon and Feta cheese are the whole of Greece. Whilst these things are of cultural significance as parts of a job description without more insight they are little more than window dressing, set up to be dismissed by all but the most earnest of job hunters. Whilst a recruiter may think that they are choosing the most attractive attributes of a compensation package they must also ask themselves do they really want to attract the candidate who favours a free lunch over a technology choice or a chance for progression?
I think the answer lies in a system of first and second order signifiers when talking about culture. Those elements you call attention to first should be the most pertinent to your audience. In the case of a Developer role for example I think we should assume that a candidate would want to know what technologies are involved, how the company writes code, how the teams are organised etc. I'd hope a great candidate would want to know all of this before hearing about the details of a benefits package...even if they include "onsite barber" and "free laundry". These first order signifiers should be discovered when a recruiter qualifies a requisition. This is the true insider knowledge and where the true indicators of culture lie, for example when saying the company has a flat-structure give the signifiers of this - small functional teams, 360 review process, accessibility to senior management. If you say a company is innovative, tell the candidate how this is manifest - hackathons, internal discussion forum, cross functional collaboration etc. Don't just say those Ancient Egyptians were "Good builders" tell me about the pyramids! If you don't you're missing the best opportunity. Make the sell of the role more compelling through authenticity, not just spewing the benefits package verbatim - don't be a perk-ulator.
Those second order signifiers are those items that apply to the general population of an organisation i.e. not role specific but company specific. These are best used to reinforce the company's values, attitudes and beliefs. If possible these should be coupled with assumptions that let the reader know about the thought behind them. Google's "20% time" (despite it's rumoured death) and Zappo's "$2000 to quit" are great examples of this and offer a great stepping off point for later discussion with candidates.
Remember, the ideal job advert is not only attractive to those people you want to hire but also screens out those you do not. If you write a generic job advertisement you will get a generic response. A correctly worded ad to the right audience is a great first filter. Candidates are not stupid, they will self select if they feel the role suits them and that is what should happen. If you write a job description that everyone likes, everyone will apply but then of course you don't want to hire everyone...
"Culture" as it is currently being used in job adverts has come to mean little more than a perk. "Salary, Bonus, Life Insurance, Great Culture". Whilst this doesn't make the top ten in my all time annoyances with how jobs are advertised it does make the mistake of entirely missing the point. If the "culture" is a differentiator why wouldn't you tell a prospective candidate about it in lavish detail? I think the issue here might be one of misunderstanding of the term.
So what is culture? Broadly defined the culture of a company is the ideas, customs and social behaviour of a particular group or society. These are the building blocks, the elemental stage of what we collectively called culture. Without description of these ideas, customs and behaviours and why they are good bad or of no interest to a candidate mentioning it is redundant.So what isn't culture? Another facet of a lack of description in a job advert is a description of the wrong things a quick scan of well intentioned descriptions lists "beers in the office", "foosball" and "free food". These things are not culture. Just like empty pyramids and papyrus scrolls are not the sum total of Ancient Egypt any more so than the Parthenon and Feta cheese are the whole of Greece. Whilst these things are of cultural significance as parts of a job description without more insight they are little more than window dressing, set up to be dismissed by all but the most earnest of job hunters. Whilst a recruiter may think that they are choosing the most attractive attributes of a compensation package they must also ask themselves do they really want to attract the candidate who favours a free lunch over a technology choice or a chance for progression?
I think the answer lies in a system of first and second order signifiers when talking about culture. Those elements you call attention to first should be the most pertinent to your audience. In the case of a Developer role for example I think we should assume that a candidate would want to know what technologies are involved, how the company writes code, how the teams are organised etc. I'd hope a great candidate would want to know all of this before hearing about the details of a benefits package...even if they include "onsite barber" and "free laundry". These first order signifiers should be discovered when a recruiter qualifies a requisition. This is the true insider knowledge and where the true indicators of culture lie, for example when saying the company has a flat-structure give the signifiers of this - small functional teams, 360 review process, accessibility to senior management. If you say a company is innovative, tell the candidate how this is manifest - hackathons, internal discussion forum, cross functional collaboration etc. Don't just say those Ancient Egyptians were "Good builders" tell me about the pyramids! If you don't you're missing the best opportunity. Make the sell of the role more compelling through authenticity, not just spewing the benefits package verbatim - don't be a perk-ulator.
Those second order signifiers are those items that apply to the general population of an organisation i.e. not role specific but company specific. These are best used to reinforce the company's values, attitudes and beliefs. If possible these should be coupled with assumptions that let the reader know about the thought behind them. Google's "20% time" (despite it's rumoured death) and Zappo's "$2000 to quit" are great examples of this and offer a great stepping off point for later discussion with candidates.
Remember, the ideal job advert is not only attractive to those people you want to hire but also screens out those you do not. If you write a generic job advertisement you will get a generic response. A correctly worded ad to the right audience is a great first filter. Candidates are not stupid, they will self select if they feel the role suits them and that is what should happen. If you write a job description that everyone likes, everyone will apply but then of course you don't want to hire everyone...
Monday, 10 March 2014
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.
Thursday, 16 January 2014
Advertising a Vacancy in the Key of C#
There is a problem with advertising a vacancy on a job board. Not just the general problem of the decline in qualified candidates having to use job boards to find a new role but also the problem of standing out in a sea of other text all advertising the same type of vacancies. How can you make plain text stand out when it's just the same as everything else? Better yet how can you make it truly relevant to your target audience?
If you take the time to look at what your competitors are putting on job boards you might notice some strange behaviours. How many of the "adverts" are actually just job descriptions? A job description and an job advertisement perform two very different functions and should look very different. If you produce a job description and post that instead of telling a reader how amazing it would be for them to work for your company you're posting a list of demands in HR Speak.
This is the equivalent of a car manufacturer televising the turning pages of the technical manual, it's just so boring! Stretching the analogy further an advert for a new job should be just as aspirational as for a new car - we want all the cornfields on fire, explosions and leather clad luxury of a car ad. We want excitement, something that will appeal to the target audience and something that demonstrates that we, as an employer, understand them.
Today I worked with one of our developers to write a job advertisement in C#. What would have taken me an age obviously only took him a few seconds to write but the feedback was the best I've ever heard for any advertisement, after we finished he said - "I would apply".
We're currently trialing a number of different styles of advertising for our jobs over on our StackOverflow company page. It's particularly useful because we can see both page views and applications so we're better able to judge the effectiveness of an ad. I'm hoping this ad in code as well as other versions we're working on might encourage those that see them to explore a little further.
We're currently trialing a number of different styles of advertising for our jobs over on our StackOverflow company page. It's particularly useful because we can see both page views and applications so we're better able to judge the effectiveness of an ad. I'm hoping this ad in code as well as other versions we're working on might encourage those that see them to explore a little further.
- using System;
- using System.Linq;
- namespace CriteoQuestions
- {
- class Program
- {
- static readonly uint THRESHOLD = 5;
- static uint Question(string text)
- {
- Console.WriteLine(text + " [y/N]");
- string answer = Console.ReadLine();
- return answer != null && answer.Equals("y") ? 1U : 0U;
- }
- static void Main()
- {
- string[] questionTexts =
- {
- "Looking for a new challenge?",
- "Want to work in the heart of Paris?",
- "Do you enjoy solving hard problems efficiently and creatively?",
- "Would you like to work where Big Data is more than a buzz word?",
- "Want to work on a product at true web scale with 30B HTTP requests and 2.5B unique banners displayed per day?",
- "Would you like to know more?"
- };
- uint score = questionTexts.Aggregate<string, uint>(0, (current, text) => current + Question(text));
- Console.WriteLine(score > THRESHOLD
- ? @"Contact m.buckland@criteo.com today"
- : @"That’s a shame, you can learn more at http://labs.criteo.com/ maybe we can change your mind?");
- Console.ReadLine();
- }
- }
- }
What other ways are there to stand out when advertising jobs online? How can you make the limitations of plain text on a job board into advantages that will make your adverts stand out from the crowd?
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