I suspect that the aforementioned twit, er, Tweeter was trying to look cool rather than gain anything practical from using Twitter instead of other modes of communication. After all, e-mail is so 20th century, and as for the phone — that was invented in 1876. Who would want to admit they used one? Might as well resort to carrier pigeons.

Let’s Go Surfing

Recruiters have a tendency to jump on the latest technology without fully appreciating its benefits or ramifications.

The newest entrant to the recruiting world is Google Wave, soon to be the solution du jour. By this time next year you’ll be told that if you’re not using Wave your career as a recruiter is likely to disappear faster than a burst of flatulence in a hurricane. You will be done with; finished; gone the way of Pontiac and Lehman Brothers — and deservedly so.

So what is Google Wave? Its inventors describe it as what e-mail would be it had been invented today instead of back in 1971. E-mail was a product of its time — an electronic version of postal mail — just faster. Back then the bandwidth was very limited so the best that could be done was send out small amounts of text. Its purpose is to send messages. It is a collaborative mechanism of sorts, but the constant back and forth of e-mail chains can get out of hand very quickly, the chaos increasing exponentially the more people are involved. Enter Google Wave: much better suited to a collaborative work environment than e-mail. A user who sends out a wave creates a workspace shared with all the people that receive it. The participants can add text, pictures, links, maps, etc. Everything is visible to everyone as it happens because all activity is logged in real time since the wave is stored on a central server instead of individual computers. Wave also keeps the activity organized and searchable. Wave brings together the functionality of just about every social media application and online communication tool. You can read everything you ever wanted to know (even if you didn’t) here.

Wave has some appeal for recruiters, not the least of which is that it’s free. As a collaborative tool it can help with activities like group interviews, evaluating candidates, writing up job requirements, etc. That’s the low-hanging fruit. Thinking more broadly, if an employee sends out a wave to a group of friends, then a recruiter could surf it (I just coined a term) to engage with them: an instant social network. Make it reach a large enough group and you could have a tsunami. Maybe not — that has too many negative connotations. Nobody wants to be associated with that. On the flip side, a bunch of disgruntled candidates sick of the shoddy treatment they got could get together and unleash one to wreck some company’s employment brand. That would be a Katrina. The possibilities are endless.

Diamond in the Rough, or Fool’s Gold?

Of course, the path to social media nirvana isn’t all roses. For all its faults, e-mail has some great features — like being able to ignore it or respond on your own time. Wave is a real-time application, which means it demands real-time attention. That can limit its appeal. Not everyone wants to be engaged all the time.

E-mail had another reason for gaining in popularity so fast. It did something that was very familiar and didn’t require a fundamental change in behavior from users. There’s a reason e-mail icons have a picture of an envelope. Using Wave well will require people to make some significant changes in behavior. Collaboration in real-time is not a normal everyday activity.

How much will Wave change recruiting? Impossible to predict. It’s just a tool; no more, no less. It’s only as good as the people who use it. Some recruiters will undoubtedly find creative ways to use it but for many it will only be a distraction. It will generate a lot of buzz and have some value in some circumstances for some people. What is absolutely certain is that it will not be a silver bullet solution for recruiting. There are none.

Get your account, and when you have it, let’s go surfing. Don’t wipe out.

Along with the homebuyer credit, the package contains another $10 billion tax break that allows companies that suffered during the last two years to use recent losses to reclaim taxes paid in the previous five years, when times were good.

This is huge news and good news for recruiters too.

Your candidates who have been on the fence because of a depressed housing market can now sell their homes (if they’ve owned them for more than five years) to buy another one and reap a $6,500 tax credit. A tax credit is a big deal. It’s money you don’t pay in the form of taxes, so it’s like earning three times that amount and paying no tax on it (if you’re in a 35% tax bracket).

The pre-existing $8,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers extension is good, too because, believe it or not, the general public is slow on the uptake and people are only now beginning to realize what a big deal that is. It has another several months to become a steady part of realtor marketing plans (it has only really been circulating even on their part for the last two months or so; how many “$8,000 Tax Credit” signs have you seen riding atop their “For Sale” signs in your neighborhood?).

If you haven’t been touting that as one of the “benefits” to your new job offering, now is the time to make it a part of your campaign too.

There’s $10 billion in tax breaks in that package that are big too. It’s supposed to be for small businesses that have shown losses in 2008 and 2009 to be able to recoup some of the taxes they paid in the previous five years. Will your recruiting company be counted in this bunch? I wouldn’t doubt if many of our small businesses qualify for this. 2008 seems kind of early for this, to me, so I’m going to be watching for an expansion/extension of this to include later years — maybe 2010, 2011, and 2012! Wouldn’t that be something?

Now, on a sobering note, and it’s a question I know some of you are thinking:

Where’s this money going to come from?

Read more here.

The economy grew 3.5% in the last quarter, signaling a definite end to the recession and the start of a recovery. That’s great news, but look closer and it doesn’t seem that there’s much to celebrate yet. Six-tenths of a percent came from spending by the federal government and another 2.2% from residential construction and auto purchases. The latter number is directly linked to the cash-for-clunkers and the housing credit. That leaves only 0.7% from private industry. This is why we’re not seeing any growth in jobs. The economy is growing because it’s being propped up by taxpayers (and the Central Bank of China) instead of by real growth in GDP. In some places this is known as a ponzi scheme.

The government claimed this past week that the stimulus package has added 650,000 jobs so far. Well, to be precise, “created or saved” that many jobs.

Jobs have been added, but just how many have been “saved” is another matter. There’s no doubt that spending on jobs has a multiplier effect; the money earned by a nurse at a hospital funded by the stimulus may go to saving the job of the mechanic at the auto repair shop where she has her car worked on. But that connection is impossible to make with any degree of precision. When it comes to estimating the number of jobs saved, the White House’s estimate is as good as yours or mine. And it’s likely that any estimate of jobs saved — since there’s no way to dispute it — is an optimistic reading of the numbers. If you’re going to make things up, then why hold back?

The fact remains that the economy has shed an average of 400,000 jobs per month since the beginning of the year. That rate of decline has slowed, and shows signs of continuing to slow even more, but it’s still a net loss. Economists predict that unemployment will start to drop in February, reaching 9.4% by the end of 2010.

Light at the End of the Tunnel

Despite all the bad news, there are signs that the situation will genuinely get better on the jobs front. Numbers from the U.S. Commerce Department show that exports and investment in equipment are both growing aggressively. That will continue since the dollar remains weak and the economies of India and China are showing significant growth. Construction and related industries will also continue to grow, with or without further tax credits, as the inventory of housing is at its lowest point in 30 years.

2010 is an election year, and nothing focuses the mind of the political class as the prospect of an election that may not go well. So programs like a tax credit for hiring are very likely to pass soon. Unfortunately, having politicians determined to do something can often mean a lot of very bad ideas being implemented. There are already rumblings about a second (or third) stimulus, which will only distort long-term growth prospects further. Recent earnings reports from companies show that plenty of them are back in the black and in a position to make new hires. Lighting a fire under them with a tax credit for new hires is one thing; piling on costs and subsidies for new projects that will undoubtedly result in new taxes on them is another.

Some things are almost always a lie: the check is in the mail; I’ll respect you in the morning; and I’m with the government and I’m here to help. Let’s hope we don’t get reminded of that yet again.

The Emperor’s New Clothes

In today’s age, the fable is a metaphor for those in HR who are unwilling to state an obvious truth to a higher up out of fear of appearing stupid, sacrilegious, or politically “incorrect.” They would sooner let a company’s reputation stick out buck naked than tell the truth about the company culture and reputation. This is co-dependency with a superior who wants Yes-men, not accountable partners.

I arrived at this observation because I am always struck by the stark difference between what companies think their employees think about them and what they tell me when I interview them. I also am always shocked about what those employees will say on Twitter, Vault, and any other number of “pink slip” sites about these top-rated employers. I wonder if anyone in competitive intelligence, PR, marketing, or HR ever reads about the fallout of bad managers making bad decisions, including furloughs, reduced hours, wearing double hats, etc. When did having a bad reputation not count?

I’ll give you an example of something that happened to me at Wal-Mart. I haven’t recruited for Wal-Mart. Last week I watched a show on the Discovery Channel about Wal-Mart’s Super Store operations. They have onboarding sessions and songs that everyone sings that promote team spirit at Wal-Mart. They showed the droves of people who drove for miles to work there. Right after I watched the show, my iPod had to be replaced. Since I was too lazy to go to the Apple store, and I wanted it right now, I went to Wal-Mart. While I was standing at the counter trying to get this chick to hand me the iPod, she turns her back to me and starts complaining about her hours being reduced to another guy who is complaining about his benefits. I finally interrupted them and asked her to please hand me the iPod and take my money. I got home, got down to my iTunes work, and opened up my gmail account, and there was an email about boycotting Wal-Mart on account of some hideous thing that it did to bust a union. In the course of one week, I had some serious employment brand material in my consciousness.

What is interesting about the TV show, the store experience, the e-mail, and the press about Wal-Mart is that there is a level of chatter about its brand that is beyond their control. Wal-Mart feels it is well on the way to rehabilitating its image through a new logo and green Super Stores; yet, that doesn’t match my personal experience in that week. What can it do about Twitter, e-mail chains, at the store, in the news, and across the Thanksgiving dinner table, especially if one incident adds fuel to the fire?

I chose Wal-Mart because well, that happened to me last week, and that is a fairly large target. I won’t be the first one to raise this reputation issue about them. Frankly, it probably doesn’t matter what people think about its “employee” brand because they employ groups of people who have limited choices and who presumably grow in faster and larger numbers than let’s say, semiconductor design engineers with PhDs. What is interesting is when all of those things collide and affect more vulnerable brands.

The war for top talent is going to get fought and influenced by Twitter, Vault, users groups, and former employees. And in a country like the U.S. where services and design are the only real place where job growth is, people know each other. Maybe some companies should consider cutting down spend on money for logos and Superbowl ads, and treat people better.

I guess the White House has gotten over the Olympics debacle. Okay, I can’t claim the credit, but the good news is that several measures are being seriously considered to provide a tax credit for creating jobs.

One program, devised by the Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, and a similar one from the Economic Policy Institute, would give employers tax credits for two years for increasing the number of jobs they have, above some baseline, or adding significant new hours. The amount of credits is small — from one to two times the amount of payroll taxes on each new hire, but it’s still progress. Far better than paying for bridges and roads and healthcare programs that at best indirectly create some temporary jobs.

The idea isn’t anything new. In 1977 to 1978 the federal government created the New Jobs Tax Credit — a wage subsidy equal to $7,000 for each additional worker hired. The program is estimated to have added about 2.1 million new jobs, at a cost of about $20,000 per job (in 2008 dollars). Compare that with the estimated $92,000 per job created under the current stimulus package and one has to wonder why this wasn’t started earlier.

If implemented, the credit is estimated to result in the creation of 1.3 million new jobs per year. This can’t happen soon enough. The unemployment picture is worse than the numbers suggest: over half a million people are estimated to have stopped looking for work altogether. Had they stayed looking, the official rate would be over 10% already. The tax credit would also arrest the attrition of skills that’s occurring with such a large portion of the workforce being unemployed for so long. The loss of value in human capital is orders of magnitude more than the loss of income.

The program is not perfect. Some of the jobs for which credits are claimed would have been created anyway. Other jobs may go away when the credit expires. Ideally the credit should be large enough to offset the payroll cost of creating new jobs. But beggars can’t be choosers, and right now there are a lot of people close to being very real beggars.

The Recruitosphere is undergoing significant change, and one of those changes just announced was the acquisition by ERE of the only sourcing conference event of its kind: SourceCon. ERE is no stranger to acquiring bright and shiny pieces of the Recruitosphere; the present event was foreshadowed by the purchase of the three-decade-old Fordyce Letter, widely considered to be some of the best information for the search and placement industry.

Now that ERE has taken over the reins of the industry’s only live, in-person sourcing conference, it will be interesting to watch where it goes. David Manaster, owner of ERE, recently described the sourcing community as possessing a “distinct (and quirky) ethos.”

There are many definitions of the word “quirky” in the dictionary. Some of them say it is: far-out with informal terms; strikingly unconventional; idiosyncratic; odd; a strange attitude or habit

Although all of these describe one or some of sourcing’s characteristics, we would take it a bit further and suggest the grassroots sourcing community that has developed over the last decade or so around the teachings of several well-known sourcing gurus is a strikingly individualistic and dedicated workforce bringing some of the most innovative solutions to today’s hiring challenges. Even so, the industry itself is at the threshold of a new era.

For a very long time, sourcing was treated as a red-headed stepchild. Shunted to the darkened far corner of the room, some of today’s sourcers stingingly remember the disregard and sometimes contempt they were held in within their organizations. This was in the very few organizations that even had the foresight or temerity to bring them onsite! Many of them fell by the wayside, disheartened and discouraged by the lack of support, training, and development that they encountered in their daily pursuits. A few of them realized that the choice that lay before them was in the decision that they could either get better or get bitter. The ones that decided to get better trail-blazed the path that led to the threshold we are on today.

It’s only the beginning, folks.

We’re just scratching the surface of where we’re going to go. There are a few things we wish for the Sourcecon conference (and for all sourcers in the sourcing community) moving forward and they are enumerated below.

Learning
We hope you understand that we sourcers are students in our hearts. Most of us are madly keen to learn new techniques but more than that we’re focused on understanding, and true understanding comes through practice. We’re curious, we don’t take no for an answer or are satisfied with superficial answers. We’re practical. It’s important that we learn new things, but it’s really important that we put those new things to the task — that they not be fluffy theories. Impress us.

Tapping into creativity
When the answers don’t come to the questions that seem to not have answers, we hope you keep going. Everything has an answer. Somewhere. You just have to find it. That’s what we do and that’s what this event should do.

Empowerment
We hope you learn that tough times, disappointment, and hard work lead to happiness and that you always strive to help others, even when they’re scared. Especially when they’re scared. We’re tenaciously persevering; we hope you will be too.

High-quality content
We’re technology savvy, literate, effortlessly coachable, and natural problem-solvers, so don’t feed us copied or recycled content. Make it original; make it worth our while, something we didn’t already read in 10 other blogs. We need credible speakers who know what it’s like to be in the sourcing hot seat. It would be great if you could create a sourcing advisory board for everything around the event, but particularly agenda and speaker selection.

Open minded and transparent
We hope you learn the value of humility by moving past failure, that you are honest when no one is looking, and fight for the things you believe in. The “air of mystery” was cool for a little while, but as sourcers our next big hurdle now is solidifying management buy-in and increasing our professional credibility. Help us elevate our trade to a level where we are openly recognized as the specialists we are. We can achieve that together, with your help, but not if there’s all this “dark arts mystery” around our already fairly cryptic job descriptions; this miasma often turns off staffing leaders and others who might otherwise become great sourcers if the activity wasn’t so ambiguous-sounding.

We’re not sourcers because it’s cool or trendy; we’re sourcers because there’s nothing else we’d rather do. Along those lines, we hope you’re transparent. We must be transparent in our work, reporting our activities not just for compliance but for our own development. We track and document everything; we take copious notes; and we look under every rock. We’d love for you to be just as open with us as we have to be with ourselves.

Timing and Sponsorship
We get that this time we need to piggyback on another event, and that’s fine, but this really is a separate event so there should be a dedicated time and place. We should also have our own vendors because they are often a different breed than those who sponsor the ERE events. Here’s an idea: what if these vendors sponsor the challenges so prizes can be stepped up. This would motivate more people to participate in challenges. Oh, and we’d love to see a sourcing tools bake-off!

Despite hundreds of billions of dollars in stimulus spending and lots of government programs, we’re now close to 10% unemployment, having lost 7.2 million jobs since the recession began. If the economy were creating 200,000 jobs a month it would still take three years just to get back to where we were. And that isn’t all. The economy needs an additional 100,000 jobs a month to keep up with population growth. If the job market returns to the rapid pace of the 1990s — adding 2.15 million private-sector jobs a year, double the 2001-2007 pace — the U.S. wouldn’t get back to a 5% unemployment rate until 2017.

So what’s holding things back?

Plenty. Most jobs come from the private sector, and that has been hit with a double whammy of first an increase in minimum wage, and second a lack of sales. The increase in minimum wage couldn’t have been worse timed. Whatever the merits of increasing minimum wage, it does nothing to increase employment. That change alone is directly responsible for increasing the unemployment rate for teens to 26% — the highest rate since 1948. Which reinforces the second problem: some $385 billion fewer was paid out in wages and salaries over the last 12 months. Small and medium businesses, which generate most of the jobs in the country, are the hardest hit. Sales have dropped, credit is still tight, and legislation like healthcare and cap-and-trade only adds to uncertainty over costs. Instead of a concerted focus on job creation, the administration and Congress keep coming up with asinine ideas like Cash for Clunkers.

The First Law of Motion

If there’s a bright spot here it’s that historically, the harder the fall, the faster the recovery. Call it the economic version of Newton’s law that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Economic growth jumped following deep recessions in the past. Following the depression, when unemployment hit 25%, the economy grew at an almost 10% annual rate for four years. The unemployment rate dropped by 11%. Following the deep recession of 1981-82, the economy grew an average of 7.7% for six years. The Economic Cycle Research Institute, which has successfully predicted the start and end of the last three recessions, has an index on the U.S. economy, and points to a very strong recovery in the coming months. That’s good news, but jobs growth doesn’t always parallel economic recovery.

A near immediate impact on the jobs picture could be achieved by following the Singapore example – a tax credit for businesses that create jobs. For such a program to work, the credit would have to offset the cost of creating jobs — basically equal to the payroll cost of new jobs created — and it would have to be around for a few years. That would light a fire under employers and nullify the effect of the two factors limiting job growth that I mentioned above.

What’s needed is action where it’s needed the most. Trouble is that the need to do something drastic for job creation doesn’t seem to be registering in Washington. Instead, on the heels of the Cash for Clunkers boondoggle we have Dollars for Dishwashers — a program to provide rebates for buying new energy efficient appliances. What’s next? Pennies for Potties, to put in new toilets?

Tell your representatives to call 65-6235-8577: the Prime Minister’s office in Singapore.

During one recession I remember being young, working in retail, and thinking: “everyone in retail has to have a four-year or master’s degree, for that is what my co-workers all had.”

I didn’t know back then that I was in the middle of a recession, one that pales in comparison to today. People now faced with transition are diligently looking for the right fit, but are also considering applying for positions which they are overqualified for, and, then they are surprised, they are not getting them.

Overqualified workers will be quickly bored, frustrated and discouraged, and the moral in the office may suffer.

One hiring manager said the best time to hire overqualified is when a company is faced with rapid growth, needing to promote quickly without much runway. Having a strong bench with “A” players will position the right talent in key roles, easing the growing pains. This is not the time most companies are feeling that growth.

Some managers are tempted to create that strong bench even without that growth. They want accounting departments full of controllers instead of accounting clerks, or an engineering department full of senior-level designers.

Soon after hiring a clearly overqualified candidate, the manager sees the pitfalls.

One employee who used to be a SVP of finance accepted a controller’s position found that he quickly felt underused. Also, he was using systems that needed to be upgraded and felt very frustrated when his recommendations were ignored. Each day his frustration grew and his respect for his boss and the systems diminished. The manager wondered how he ever had an SVP-level position after seeing the attitude he displayed. This is a classic example of the right person in the wrong position. The controller was set up for failure.

A sales position was filled with a candidate who once was an industry expert, and a very successful sales manager who won outstanding performance awards. Selling is selling; she thought and felt she could quickly move up based on her prior track record. Once she joined the sales force she found that she really didn’t fit in. Placed on a team made up of mostly entry-level people she had no one to identify with, and felt like an outcast. Her co-workers viewed her as a manager — even though she wasn’t — and also had difficulty working with her. Her managers confessed they hired her to help bring the level of professionalism up on their team. The feeling of isolation was very difficult and resulted in a continued job search.

The manager was relieved when she moved on. It takes quite a different approach in managing the overqualified.

The right fit is still the goal for many hiring managers, even though the temptation is there. The best candidate for a position is one who can do 50 to 75% of the work with the need to learn and grow to master the task. This period of time will give an employee the challenges and rewards most seek and provide a give and take with the manager. This provides a success track, putting the candidate in the best light to perform and succeed and display a positive attitude.

As far as what we can do with the overqualified, one senior level HR strategic planner suggests the best fit for an overqualified candidate would be a staff-level in a totally new area, such as putting an operations person in a staff-level human resource role, or a retrained engineer in an entry-level IT position. Switching industries or areas will give a candidate the right opportunities to grow and learn, preserving their enthusiasm and optimism. These retrained or redirected employees, with their prior experiences and successes, will usually be on a faster growth path, and be able to pull on past experiences to become a valuable contributor to the new area.

The article cites a lady who specializes in what she calls energy profiling. She claims she or one of her licensees can examine your photograph to determine with perfect accuracy (her words) your personality type. Amazing! And to think all those psychologists who worked their way through graduate school, suffered peer-reviewed research, and spent tons of money pursuing advanced degrees for the last 100 years could have just looked at your photograph! Go figure.

I searched, but aside from watching an engaging streaming video taken in front of some very picturesque mountains, I found little proof that she was qualified to produce legitimate hiring tools. Her PR firm did claim she revolutionized the fashion and beauty industries by sharing her simple beauty/fashion assessments with women around the world; helped women align their physical features in perfect harmony with their clothing, jewelry, hair color and style; and provided pioneering insights on weight, sex & intimacy/relationships, depression, self-esteem, parenting, finances, physical health, and spiritual health. Wow. After all that, I guess hiring was the only field left to master.

I don’t know about you, but I like to see a writer have professional certifications or special education that would convince me they actually knew what they were talking about. You know, the same way we would expect a medical correspondent to actually have practiced medicine, a legal expert to graduate from an accredited law school, or an engineer to a have a legitimate engineering degree. But that’s just me.

She presents, as proof of her work, a collection of streaming video segments and personal testimonials from people claiming her system changed their lives for the better. Sorry, folks, this kind of “proof” is nothing more than personal opinion. If you want to know whether something is fact, you have to produce facts to support your opinion. Unbridled enthusiasm unsupported with expert knowledge is a dangerous thing.

I’m sure she is sincere about what she does. No one would make such wild claims unless they were. Unfortunately, using a photograph system to type people and predict job skills is a shining example of pure nonsense.

Let’s list a few facts prepared by the DOL, published in 1978.

As I claimed before, if you want to see an example of a rare event when the government got it right, read through the 1978 Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures.

Clearly Define What You Want to Measure

The Guidelines suggest it’s a good idea to conduct a professional job analysis before starting any hiring project. A professional job analysis includes talking with employees to learn what they do, talking with managers to learn what’s important, and talking with people who know if the job will change in the future. Since these folks cannot be expected to know about testing, the analyst converts their information into measurable competencies and verifies it with a wide range of job content experts.

You know this step has been missed when people in the hiring chain argue among themselves or complain the recruiter keeps sending them the wrong people. A good job analysis reduces job confusion. BTW… I’ve never yet seen a professional analyst break down a job into this lady’s purported energy types. We must have all missed that class.

Step Two

Now that we know what to measure, it’s time to hit the books to choose trustworthy measurement tools. In some cases, this will be structured interview questions, pencil and paper tests, job simulations, realistic job previews, case studies, planning exercises, technical knowledge tests, and so forth. The important thing to remember is that any process used to separate qualified from unqualified applicants, even if it is a yardstick, is a test. I cannot repeat this enough: interviews, resume screens, application blanks, and even specialized recruiting sources are tests!

It would be nice to know the tests you used were accurate.

The DOL says you cannot rely on validity claims made by vendors, marketing literature, third party statements, or any other source. These claims probably have nothing to do with your job. Can you use a test developed for bankers to hire your banker? Only if you can show the two jobs are highly similar. That’s a good thing. Why spend tens of thousands of dollars based on false assurances?

Conclusion

Read up on the Guidelines. I’m sure this won’t be the last time someone will naively try to expand market share. But making a hiring decision based on a person’s photograph is not only bad science; it is completely irresponsible behavior

I can just see the future. “Position open for individual with a well developed root chakra, median energy navel chakra, and a mature third-eye chakra. Candidates with an overactive sacral chakra or an undeveloped heart chakra need not apply. Mature crown chakra’s always welcome.”

Does HR need any more trouble with gaining credibility?

I have a second email from an even more prominent HR blogger in my inbox from late July, offering “guaranteed positive posts and tweets” in return for ERE covering all or part of their travel costs.

Why do these emails bother me? They show a willingness on the part of their authors to write their “thoughts” publicly, while never disclosing that those thoughts were not genuine, but contingent on favors.

I don’t think that either blogger thought of those emails in this way, but they were, in short, proposals for payola. I scratch your back, you scratch mine. And these are not extraordinary — they are just the two of the more bold tit-for-tats I’ve received.

Workforce Online recently published a piece on transparency in the HR Blogosphere. Collectively, the HR bloggers’ reaction ranged from outrage to dismissal. Nobody likes to be called out in public.

But as someone intimately familiar with many (but not all) of the players, I’ve long been troubled my many of the same things that are brought up in the Workforce piece. And so far, I’ve seen a lot of indignation and questioning of motives about the article (Old media: scared, out of line, link-baiting.  Bloggers: Great guys, opinionated, keeping it real.) but nobody seems to be claiming that any of the points and examples of undisclosed conflicts of interest in the article were incorrect.

I think that is a disservice, because even if HR bloggers disagree with the assertion that the level of disclosure they’re currently providing about their conflicts of interest is woefully inadequate, it’s worth considering the issues raised in the article and the level of disclosure that they provide.

It’s not wrong for bloggers to make money from their hard work. But deception about the motives behind a post — even by omission — can destroy all of that in a heartbeat. (Anyone else remember the Pay Per Post scandal?)

HR bloggers: I love you. Please don’t let the Sturm und Drang over the Workforce article keep you from giving this issue a cold, sober look.

There was a blog posting by David Lynn recently here on ERE that asked where recruiting belonged: under HR?

I could feel the blood rushing into my fingers as I answered: “I have strong feelings about this. It belongs under finance with a leg into biz dev and mergers & acquisitions as well.”

And it does.

Here’s why:

Recruiting is such a vital function in an organization because it touches every person in that organization. Not every department can be said to do this. We all know a company is as good as its people.

Recruiting belongs under finance because it is basically a competitive intelligence function.

Yes, recruiting involves talking to people in the outside world, and if you’re doing it right you’re gathering intelligence along the way. I suspect applications like salesforce.com could be very useful in these maneuvers, but I am talking out of school because I am not using it (yet). But any application that could capture (and distribute) the notes, thoughts, and facts that any contributor in the company enters regarding a particular candidate would be wildly useful as an “M&A” tool.

“He said money seems tight around his company and he’s worried moving forward about the viability of his position.”

If I was working as an M&A professional (and I have) I would look at that and think, “Hmmm…I wonder if they’re having cash-flow problems.”

I’d then take a look at the company in question (if it was a competitor and I was tasked with finding objects to buy) and do a preliminary inquiry into the company’s possible availability.

“Hello Mrs. CFO. This is Maureen Sharib. I am with XYZ and our desire to grow is why I am calling you. Could we maybe have a conversation around a possible partnership between our two companies?”

Putting it like that belies the fact that I know they’re having cash-flow problems, or at least something is going on inside her company that is making their employees think so. A gentle knock on her door but an opening for discussion, nevertheless.

I’d approach finance first because, after all, this is the drive engine of the company. She’s going to be consulted anyway in an event like this, so why not include her from the get-go and make friends early? Let it be her idea taking it to her boss.

Reporting up through finance makes sense for business development as well.

“He’s frustrated with the technology inside his company. Doesn’t feel they’re keeping up.”

Wow. If I was working in business development and had something I could sell to this company, I’d sit up straight and immediately pull Hoover’s up for contact information, and then I’d call.

“Hello, Purchasing. This is Maureen Sharib and I have a technology product that could change your employees’ attitudes towards their jobs.”

Let Purchasing walk with the glory. You just made a sale.

This isn’t brain surgery and appears to me to be common sense. What does it appear to you as?

How can a free job board survive? Some make money from advertising (think Google AdWords). Some charge the job seekers for access. And many boards, I suspect, simply don’t make money.

So what gives?

Why upend the most common job board model (where employers pay to post jobs and view resumes)? Listen to Chris Anderson, in his recent book Free: “In a marketplace with low marginal costs and many competitors, (free) feels inevitable for most digital goods.” (For a roundup of the arguments pro and con surrounding this assertion, go here).

Hmm? I guess I wasn’t the only one who choked on that: “I do agree with Anderson and Godin’s underlying point, the “freemium” model — giving away some content while offering a more valuable experience for a premium — but it’s neither a new idea nor a terribly innovative one,” said Guy LeCharles Gonzalez in a recent blog post. “The containers may change and get cheaper, but it’s the content that gives them value, and the creation and distribution of quality content isn’t free.”

Freedom’s Just Another Word for …

Aha! So ‘free’ really isn’t ‘free’, at least as far as Anderson and his followers are concerned. ‘Free’ is another word for ‘roping them in’ with a free job post, or a test run on the resume database. I imagine most job sites are already offering some version of ‘free’.

But what about the true believers: those jobs sites that are completely free to the employer? How can they exist — and can they thrive? Let’s take a look at some of the factors involved:

• Super low barriers to entry: If you have 20 minutes, you can set up your own job board with SimplyHired’s Jobomatic. They take care of everything except the traffic — that, you must supply. What could be easier? Well …
• Social media: Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media channels have yet to settle on their business models, so in the meantime, recruiters can use them just like job boards (ok, kind of dimwitted and poorly focused job boards). Cost? Nothing much but your valuable time.
• Inadequacy at the top: The big three job boards continue to display a lack of initiative in solving employers problems. Results? Recruiters continue to turn to niche job boards and social media.

Each of these has played a role in the growth of free job boards. But you have to ask…

Can ‘Free’ Really Stay Free?

Is it really plausible for a ‘free’ board to stay that way? Can employer really expect an eternal ‘free ride’?

I doubt it. Any job site worth its salt has to fulfill one basic function: it must provide a targeted, high-quality stream of job seekers who respond to employer offerings. Generating and maintaining this audience costs money. So too does the operation and improvement of the site itself. Jobomatic and its ilk are limited in what they can provide to seekers and employers. Maybe that will change. But again, I’m betting that change will come with a price tag.

Those sites relying on job seeker revenues will always be limited because the majority of seekers have been trained over the past 15 years to expect access at no charge. That’s a hard lesson to unlearn (even a site like TheLadders also garners revenue from recruiters).

Where does that leave the ‘not-free’ job boards? Right where they were: scrambling to maintain relevance and value in a tumultuous recruiting world. The best (and a few lucky ones) will survive.

Twitter has value for recruiting, no question. Tweeting jobs raises their visibility because search engines rank them higher, though this works in an indirect way. Twitter adds a “nofollow” attribute to links submitted by its users. The “nofollow” attribute advises Google, and a few other search engines, to ignore the link. Some of these follow the links but exclude them from their ranking calculations (Yahoo, Google); some ignore the links completely (MSN, Bing). The only known search engine that doesn’t comply with “nofollow” at all is Ask.com. What Twitter does is to affect positively a website’s Alexa rankings by sending visitors to those pages. Usage data is a sign of quality for Google and all the other search engines and raises their rankings in search results. But search engines don’t index Tweets in real-time today so there’s a lag. However, that can be compensated for by using the “bio” line on Twitter to include some text on your jobs, because that is being constantly indexed.

Pointless Babble

Broadcasting openings via Twitter can help fill jobs, as described here. But Twitter is a particularly weak tool when it comes to engaging with others or building community. First lets examine the available evidence. Analysis of Twitter usage patterns show that there’s not much in the way of two-way communication happening via Tweets. A study by Pear Analytics found that some 40% of Tweets qualify as “pointless babble” and about the same amount as “conversational updates.” It should be no surprise that while Tweets are great for broadcasting anything, they’re not a channel on which to have a serious conversation. Twitter is much too public a forum to engage with a community. Communities on Facebook and other sites are restricted: you have to be accepted as a friend to get in. Anybody can follow someone on Twitter or find their tweets. That’s not how communities form.

Further proof of this comes from a study at the Social Computing Lab at HP which found that Twitter users have a very, very small number of real friends compared to the number of followers they claim. A link between any two people does not necessarily imply any interaction between them. In the case of Twitter, most of the links between users are meaningless from an interaction point of view. Put that together with other data, such as that half are not active, and the only conclusion that can be drawn is that as a social networking tool Twitter has limited value.

Social Networking 101

Social networking works by engaging with people and communities. Communities share something — an idea, an interest, theme, or topic. That happens more on sites like Facebook, MySpace, or Cachinko, where access is limited and one has to request to join a community. HP’s Social Computing Lab has also found that inside close-knit communities, information flows faster and to more people because an item relevant to one person is more likely to be of interest to individuals in the same social circle than those outside of it. Engage with the right communities and you can amplify your message and expand your networking efforts exponentially. But the key word here is “engage” — having something to share that the community cares about — so that its members will interact and reciprocate. That is more likely on sites like Facebook than through Twitter. Just how many meaningful conversations does anyone have that they’d like the world to be able to learn about?

Using Twitter is not a waste of time, but its value is limited as a way to expand your social networking efforts. For the average recruiter interested in social networking, their time would be better spent engaging with communities on Facebook and other sites. Twitter can raise the visibility of your jobs, but it’s not the most powerful tool in the social media toolset.

The last time I wrote about this subject some people interpreted it to mean that I was critiquing everything to do with social networking. Far be it for me to do so — I like social networking and it has been a huge benefit to me professionally. I just returned from a six-month project in Switzerland that came about because of social networking.

Some readers pointed out that many find it hard to accept any kind of criticism that challenges their cherished beliefs. If you haven’t got something nice to say then don’t say anything. If you’re not with us you’re against us. Seems like narrow-mindedness isn’t limited to healthcare reform. That’s understandable — nobody wants to be told that the prophet they’ve been listening to doesn’t have the answer to their prayers and probably doesn’t know a whole lot more than them. One of the many lessons my parents taught me was that just because someone may not like what you say is no reason not to say it, unless you’re running for election. And I’m not.

The Northern Lights have seen strange sights,
But the queerest they ever did see … – The Cremation of Sam McGee

While they may not quite compare to the sight spoken of by the nameless narrator of Robert Service’s famous poem, nonetheless some of the tales I’ve heard lately of interviews certainly give Cremation of Sam McGee a run for its money.

By far the most dramatic was the interviewer who spent the entire interview reading email. When the candidate tried to get the interviewer’s attention, the response was, “We multi-task here.”

The interviewers who ask technical questions and then say, “That’s not how I would solve the problem, so you must be wrong,” are, sadly, so common that they don’t even rate.

I must confess that when I heard the first story, I was left speechless. Here’s an interviewer trying to convince a candidate to take a job at a company and is treating that candidate with a total lack of respect. If that’s how the person behaves when the candidate isn’t working there, how will he behave when the candidate is working there? That’s assuming, of course, that the candidate takes the job.

Now, it’s highly likely that some people are thinking that there must be a mistake in the previous paragraph: shouldn’t it say that the candidate is trying to convince the company to hire them? Sure they are; however, it’s a two-way street. The company clearly needs someone to fill a certain position, even if it’s not that specific person. Conversely, that person needs a job, even if it’s not that specific job.

But wait, it’s a terrible economy! Does the candidate really have a choice?

Surprising as it may seem, yes they do. If one company is hiring people with a given skill set, odds are others are as well. Companies hire because they believe that the value of bringing someone in exceeds the cost: in other words, they see a potential, or actual, source of revenue. Well, there are a lot of companies out there; if one finds a valuable niche, you can bet others will too. Pretty soon, they’ll be competing for the available pool of talent. The best people will go where they are most respected.

Of course, once a company has successfully hired someone, there’s the little matter of keeping the person. Economies have a nasty habit of suddenly getting better. People who feel that they are being badly treated at their current company are the most likely to jump ship when things turn around. The worst time for a company to lose people to the competition is, by a rather amazing coincidence, when business is really starting to ramp up. The company that establishes a huge lead at the start of an economic upswing may not become the dominant player, but that’s the way to bet. The company that lags risks being doomed to second-rate status, if it survives at all.

During the last downturn, the CEO of one midsized technology company told several employees that he wouldn’t give them raises because, “It’s a terrible economy and you have no where else to go.” Within a month, each of those people had found new jobs at significantly higher rates of pay. Although the employees were eventually replaced, the cost to the company, in terms of lost productivity and ramp-up time for the new people, was huge. Their competitors dethroned them from their once dominant position in their market niche. The company now no longer exists.

It is, therefore, extremely important to remember that trying to take advantage of a downturn is penny wise and pound foolish. The hiring process is the first glimpse that prospective employees will have of your company and its culture. Right from the start, it’s critical to present the right image. That means that:

• As obvious as it may seem, apparently there are interviewers who don’t realize that they should give candidates their undivided attention. Would you hire a candidate who spent the interview reading email or IMing?
• The company needs to understand who it’s looking for and know how to recognize that person. Bringing candidates back for one round of interviews after another only sends the message that the company doesn’t know what it’s doing.
• Tests, puzzles, or other problems presented to the candidate to solve must be presented by employees who are capable of understanding answers other than their own. It’s not a battle of wits: the goal is to see if the candidate can solve the problem, not if they can read the interviewer’s mind. Interviewers who will only hire candidates less skilled than they are doom the company to mediocrity.

If you want the best people, you need to treat them with respect from the very beginning. When it comes to treating people with respect, it’s never different this time around.

I understand this line of thinking. It’s simple, concise, easy to categorize. A “sexy” pitch. In fact, it’s the same line of thinking that leads to the idea that anyone who hangs out with a communist must be a communist sympathizer, or that someone who fires a woman must be a misogynist, or who is accused must be guilty in some way. In short, it’s dead wrong.

What’s wrong about it is it’s incendiary, irresponsible, and extreme. One-sided. And it’s not like I believe the opposite line of thinking to be true either (that all recruiting should be focused on those who are unemployed). Quite the contrary. I have a problem with that version as well. I’ve read a number of articles (such as in Workforce Management Magazine lately, in this recession, that imply (or even overtly state) that passive recruiting is a “shameful practice” and contributes to the distrust of corporate America by the many millions of workers who are seeking employment. Passive recruiting shameful? Again, this reasoning is as misguided as the CEOs above.

“To suggest that passive recruiting in the face of a high unemployment rate is unethical is a misnomer that fails to take into account the bigger picture,” says Dr. Cheryl-Marie Hansberger, vice president of strategic development for Delcan, a global engineering firm. “It is true that most industries are seeing an increase in the number of applicants per position; however, for our company this increase has not equated to larger pools of qualified candidates. Instead this increase creates an additional burden for lean HR teams as we spend more time processing unqualified applicants. The fact of the matter is successful companies use the most cost-effective means to recruit qualified candidates, whether it is a direct hire or a passive candidate, period.”

And this is what I’m not hearing much of in all the chatter out there — the middle ground — where the truth lies.

“Recruiters … want to fill the job perhaps more than anyone,” says Ginny Eagle, director of talent acquisition for T-Mobile. “If the requisition has attracted what appears to be top candidates, we look no further. If not, we source. Sourcing involves multiple activities to find the perfect candidate. Professional networking tools are used, and we often can’t really tell if someone is still employed or not because people are not updating their profiles when they first leave a job. They sometimes wait, so they don’t appear to be unemployed.”

One of the themes that I’ve constantly referred back to is, when it comes to recruiting, one size does not fit all. As mentioned above, great recruiting requires both active and passive strategies and, in short, good, hard work. As with most things, to say that something is all or nothing simply isn’t true. For instance, the idea that active recruiting involves “damaged goods” is simply not always the case. It takes a great HR person to know the difference.

“There is no denying that many share the opinion that the best people don’t get laid off. To me, this is a narrow point of view as situations certainly exist, such as our current economic environment, that put even the best people at risk,” notes Jason Farr, vice president, global talent acquisition, Coca-Cola Enterprises.
“I believe it’s important to not limit ourselves and to be open to all candidates.”

To be sure, there are candidates who have been laid off for performance reasons, and companies do use an economic downturn to mask laying off people for performance issues. In this instance, companies know there are a lot more active candidates in the marketplace and thus, they can replace the individual laid off quicker. As a result, there are certainly individuals with professional red flags in the marketplace, but the successful recruiter will have a balanced view of this.

And there are undoubtedly specific roles whereby the chances are that 90% or more of appropriate candidates will be developed through passive recruiting. For certain roles, in certain professions, there are simply not a lot of candidates, and the best people are employed elsewhere. “While passive recruiting is very costly, it is essential in industries that have large barriers to entry and, as a result, smaller qualified applicant pools,” says Hansberger.

“Those in the healthcare industry know this quite well,” adds Christine de la Paz, human resources director, Aurora Behavioral HealthCare. “We are specific to what we are looking for, and not only through our whim … the requirements are dictated by government bodies and accrediting organizations. After all, our RNs need to have a valid license.”

Thus if you’re a company looking for these types of people, you have to know where they are and be able to convince them to come elsewhere. To not adopt this approach for these key roles would be corporately irresponsible.

But a vital element in all of this is you don’t have to pursue only one strategy. The different approaches do require different skill sets. Active candidate recruiters tend to have a “post and pray” mentality and are very assessment-focused; passive candidate recruiters are skilled at sourcing strategy and research, among other things.

The key is that as recruiters and HR professionals, we have to develop skills and techniques to do both and should not necessarily be single-strategy focused. Some (dare I say many) roles will require both an assessment and sourcing strategy.

Notes Chelle Wingeleth, director-global recruitment services, Research in Motion Ltd, the developer of the BlackBerry mobile device, “It is incumbent upon recruiting professionals to design and pursue strategies to find the best talent quickly. In today’s market it is true that there are more active candidates; however, this does not mean that we can become complacent and rely upon one source. Posting a job so that active candidates may apply is not a silver bullet. What if the right candidate does not apply? A good recruiter will focus on attracting active applicants and, in parallel, search for passive candidates.”

A question bigger than all of this lurks, however: As staffing and recruiting teams have dwindled in companies and the recruiting specialists have left, where do we go to identify candidates?

The answer, as you may have guessed, turns out to be not one place but many places. They include everything from using outsourced providers to developing appropriate sourcing methods in-house (as mentioned above).

Ultimately, according to Wingeleth, “Companies and recruiters are striving to do the right thing. Who among us does not want to see unemployment go down? But, the reality of our situation is this: The national jobless rate is 9.5%. This means that 90.5% of Americans are employed. No line manager or company playing to win in this economy would say they want to ignore 90% of the potential talent. Put another way, who would only want to consider 10% of the possible candidates?”

Thus, as I’ve mentioned previously, if your ultimate goal is to increase your value to your organization, and be the best recruiter possible, you have to stay away from only-one-way-or-another, all-or-nothing mentality. In the end, in this economy, it may get you nothing.

Organizations worry about being perceived as offering a good balance between work and personal time.

Many career sites and recruiters stress the ways the organization addresses this through flexible work policies, family-friendly HR polices, child care, and so on. And, for many job seekers, finding a company that offers this magic blend is the Holy Grail.

While Jack was addressing women specifically and speaking about their opportunities for promotion and growth within traditional corporate America, he was reinforcing this assumption. He was heavily criticized for talking to women in this way, even though it is an accurate reflection of the thinking in most of traditional corporate America.

My problem is not with Jack as much as it is with the assumptions that work/life balance is based on.

We assume that work and family should be separated and that there should somehow be an equal division between the two, which is implied in the word “balance.”

The concept of work and life being somehow distinct from each other is a recent construct. There was no work/life balance in the 17th, 18th, 19th, or for most of the 20th centuries. Work and life were integrated and no one would have even thought to separate out what portion of farm life, for example, was “life” and what portion was “work.” Wives and husbands and children worked together as family units, producing food, clothing, or operating a small family business. Roles were assumed and cast off as needed and whoever had the ability or skill needed at a particular time did what was needed to be done.

In most of the world this is still the case. It is only in developed nations that these artificial distinctions arose to meet the needs of factories where everyone had to be in a physical place for certain time frames in order for things to be made. It took England and the United States decades to get people accustomed to going to work at a particular time and staying for a fixed amount of time. The way we work today has never been an organic or natural way, and our fixation recently on work/life balance is only the latest manifestation of an old issue.

Where I think Jack was misguided was in not recognizing how rapidly the traditional corporate world is crumbling. Organizations like Facebook, Mozilla, and hundreds of other emerging firms are organizing in radically different ways. They are focusing on interdependence, on building networks and fostering relations between workers, vendors, and customers. Innovative firms realize that flat structures and open communication improve creativity.

So the good news is that many organizations are moving back into the world where work and life are integrated and where entire families may be part of the “team.” Technology makes this possible, and as high definition video, faster connections, and touch capabilities improve it will be easier and easier. At the most exciting startups, people are already seamlessly integrated into projects where roles frequently change as needs change and leadership rotates as project requirements evolve. Workers are able to be at home with their kids or spouse. They can be outdoors or indoors. And very often they can be physically far removed from the “office” whatever that is coming to mean. The emerging concept is that being in a certain place for a specific time is less important than achieving results and accomplishing goals.

While Baby Boomer managers are locked into the concept of physical space and time as keys to assessing contribution, younger workers have a different view. They realize that for personal as well as environmental and energy reasons, working from home is going to become the norm.

I am not downplaying how difficult it is to change the Baby Boomer attitude, but I am optimistic that as younger managers appear, as environmental pressures increase, and as younger organizations begin to generate significant revenue and employ more people, attitudes about work will change rapidly.

There will always remain work that requires physical presence — whether it is making something, caring for an ill person, or fixing your drainpipe. But less and less work requires a physical presence, and what remains may be done with greater flexibility and personalization than it is today. Our entire world rotates around an 80+ year-old concept that work is something done away from home, for a set amount of time, and should not be fun. Work is assumed to be only the means to have another life and as little of it as possible is good. The flip side to that is an assumption that work is what makes life meaningful and to do it with your partner, friends, or family is good. How many hours it takes to do it or where it gets done are far less important than the engagement and accomplishment.

Jack Welch was absolutely right if we are thinking about 20th century corporate life. However, Gen Y and those who follow are forging new territory and reinventing work — making it the engaging experience it should be where friends and families interact together all the time, teach each other, share workloads, and find emotional connections that have been purged from corporate life as we have known it.

EE = (1-N) X (R/P)

Where:

EE = Effectiveness of Engagement, expressed as a percentage

Engagement, in this context, means getting ready access to employees’ networks, regardless of the mechanism for doing so. Virtually 100% of employees have social networks and connect to them using different means (networking sites are not the only way to do so), but only a certain proportion of employees may be willing to give an employer access, by either making the contacts available or agreeing to forward job postings to them.

N = The proportion (%) of employee networks that an employer or recruiter has engaged with.
R = The average number of qualified referrals received per month per employee
P = The average number of postings accepted by employees to their networks per month

So if an employer is engaged with 10% (N) of employees’ social networks, and on average each employee accepts 3 (P) postings per month, and produces 2 (R) qualified referrals:

EE = (1-10%) X (2/3) = 60%

If the same results are achieved by engaging with 50% of employee networks, EE = 33%

Engagement is more effective the larger the number of qualified referrals received for the same proportion of employee networks an employer is engaged with. However, this is not a bottomless pit. Research shows that beyond a certain threshold of postings, the volume of qualified referrals starts to flatten out and even reduce.

Reality Meets Hype

All that’s being claimed about the potential of social networks as sourcing tools hinges on being able to increase N. But engagement takes time and effort and there are no shortcuts, which is why many of the claims being made about how social networks can revolutionize recruiting border on the ludicrous.

Take the buzz around Twitter as an example. Originally conceived as an answer to the prayers of narcissists and stalkers — okay, “to support the idea that people should enjoy an ‘always on virtual omnipresence’” — it’s now being touted as a critical tool for recruiters interested in social networking. The conventional wisdom is contradicted by a recent study from Harvard that shows it to be just a broadcast mechanism. Ninety-percent of tweets are generated by 10% of users. Across all Twitter, users the median number of lifetime tweets is one!

Social networking is about communities, where there’s sharing of information, give and take, etc. for the members to stay connected with each other. Twitter is a one-way street — there’s no evidence to show that it supports social networking. A recent interview with Twitter cofounder Biz Stone has him talking about companies using Twitter to sell pies, warm cookies, and respond to customer service requests. There’s no social networking going on here, unless the pie eaters are sitting around the same table.

Some would claim that having a broadcast mechanism is precisely the point. A recruiter can broadcast jobs. That requires candidates to follow them or the employer. In which case, just how is this different than an e-mail alert? Job postings don’t have the same shelf life as warm cookies, and a quick response usually doesn’t alter the outcome.

Increasing N

Research on communities by the Pew Foundation and others shows that engagement requires starting in and participating in conversations. The main reasons people share are:

• To help someone who would benefit (81%)
• To give back, after benefiting from sharing (42%)
• To show enthusiasm (39%)
• To show dissatisfaction (19%)

Interestingly, only 5% of people share to be seen as experts.

However, to state the obvious, starting and participating in a conversation requires having something interesting to say that the community cares about. An excellent example of this is Elevenmoms on Wal-Mart’s website. They have 20 moms blogging here. The blog is focused on a specific demographic with a very clear mandate of the type of community it supports. Try engaging with that one if you’re not a mom. The point being, in case it still isn’t clear, is that increasing N takes a lot of focused effort. As a recruiter involved in social networking, you need to figure out the engagement profile of your audience:

1. Where do they interact (or not interact)?
2. What topics get them excited?
3. What do they share?

Technology is the least useful thing here. Using Twitter is not going to help much, as the usage patterns show. There isn’t a person on the face of the planet who has enough interesting things to say on a regular basis that they deserve to be followed. Any pronouncements people make, including what they have to say about their place of work or jobs, can always be searched for the few nuggets of useful information buried in the mountains of drivel. To increase N focus on a few communities you can engage with and forget toys like Twitter. Face it, unless your last name is Spacey or Kutcher you’re not likely to have much of a following. And even if you get some, they won’t stay: Nielsen Media estimates that 60% of Twitter users stop using it after a month.

If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to. –Parker

The world is so full of a number of things, I am sure we should all be happy as kings; and you know how happy kings are. –Thurber

I am not sure of why, but many recruiters I know are not very good with money, myself included. Perhaps it’s the stress of the business or our belief that we can always make more that allows us to use money as a balm to soothe our aching souls. This is unfortunate because there is nothing less valuable then money you have just spent. (Honestly, which first-year agency person does not have his Porsche picked out?)

The following ideas can preserve precious resources and give you a sense of control and dominion in these difficult times. This list is by no means comprehensive but it is good starting point in terms of employing the belief that a penny saved really is a penny earned. If you try to do this and it is not painful, you are not trying hard enough.

1. Coffee. The days of hanging in expensive coffee houses connected to ear buds looking the part of an out-of-work writer in deep thought is over. Furthermore, the days of bizarre coffee concoctions sold at silly prices are disappearing rapidly as value is the new ideal. Find good coffee at a good price and save hundreds a year in the process. Forget that they claim to support rain forests, wild jackals, and icecap stabilization. If you are that concerned, send them your own money.
2. Buy Nothing. I mean it just as it reads. Absolutely, positively nothing. Do without, make it last, or get it fixed. You have enough clothes, gadgets, and everything else one needs in your overstuffed closets. No one will be impressed with your new watch. You will not look European, cool, or like a connoisseur or all things fine. You will simply look like a person who spent too much on a watch. Want to go one step further? Toss or donate everything you do not need, and get a tax write-off like the big criminals (Sorry; I meant to use the word “company” — honest mistake) and enjoy the Zen of having less junk.
3. Consolidate. Consolidate all your credit cards into one and then look for another card that has a low rate for one-year and transfer the funds over to that card. Many cards will now give you one year at 2.9%. That’s a good deal. (It should be a good deal; it’s your tax money that bailed them out.) This will involve some phone work and the great negotiating skills that recruiters use every day, but it is worth it. Honestly, do you want them to have even one more dime of your money?
4. Cable. Many of us have a threesome of Internet, cable, and phone. Call your cable company and see exactly what you are paying for and determine if you really need it. Make it your goal to get that bill down by a third, and make them your partner in doing so. If you can get a better deal from another vendor, do so, because if they could trade you for a more profitable customer, they would do it in a New York minute.
5. Dine In. I love going out to eat as much as the next person. Corinne once cooked so little that field mice ate the lining of the stove and we had to buy another one. (I kid you not.) If you really want to have great food and cut your bill by 50%, order food to go, pick it up, and just do your drinking at home. Paying $7.50 for each glass of wine and $8.50 for each martini is bizarre, adds up fast, and makes for a dangerous driver.
6. Cook. This is a close relative of number five. Can you even imagine how much you might save if you not only drink at home but also cook your own food? As a society, I wonder why we seem to have lost the ability to cook our own food and seem to be OK with others doing that for us on an almost daily basis. Make something you love and make enough for two days.
7. Insurance. Few things are as boring as meeting by phone with those who broker/sell/manage your insurance. I personally am insured for everything; home, auto, accident, dismemberment, workers’ comp, and Martians abducting my kids. This is crazy. Shop around for competitive rates and see about putting all of your insurance with one agent. Look for wasteful overlap of multiple coverages. Be sure to shop around to get competitive rates in writing. Do not let anyone sell you anything!
8. Maintain and Repair. All of us would love to buy a new car, but that might not be a good idea. Beware of the low interest rates, rebates, and showrooms with big balloons. If your car needs maintenance, bring it in and get the work done as soon a possible. If you do this, you will not have increases in excise tax or insurance, and best of all, you will not be making car payments until you die.
9. Your Car is Dead. Can’t repair? Buy a Honda Accord or a Toyota Camry. These cars in the four-cylinder model are a great value, comfortable, fast, and good on gas. Truth be told, I suspect that 80% of the drivers out there would have their needs met with either of these two cars. American cars are getting better, but the shaky financials of the big three frightens me. When GM folds, do you really want to own an Impala?
10. Banker. Do you know your banker? You should be on first-name basis with first-line management at your bank, and should at least know the branch manager. Banks are getting very innovative in terms of new products and services, so I strongly suggest that you get a bit chummy and make the bank your partner in supporting your efforts to survive this economic downturn. If you adopt a “what can we do” as opposed to a “what can I do” approach to finances, you will discover more options.
11. Pay to join. Barnes & Noble has a deal that allows you to get lower prices on purchases by giving it $25 for a membership. Perhaps I do not get it, but paying for the privilege of getting a lower price is insane. (See Retail Anarchy by Sam Pocker.) Like a book at B&N? Get it on the Internet at its lowest price and get it used in its poorest condition. I know it works because I do it every single day. Alibris is wonderful.
12. Look Closely. Examine every charge and every line of each bill for 60 days. Do not pay for anything you do not understand without a clear and definitive phone conversation. Ask how you can reduce the bill by one third. Look for programs, deals, or special incentives. Make the person you are dealing with feel your pain. If you do not get what you want, it is time to crawl up through the organization to higher levels. Be pleasant. Be relentless.

To the untrained eye, this might look like a plan for those in poverty. It is not. From a numbers standpoint, it is a plan for those who appreciate the maxim that it is not how much you earn: it is how much you keep. From a philosophical standpoint, it is a plan for those who need to feel empowered, as there is something noble, something extraordinary, about hanging tough from day to day and refusing to give into fear and frustration.

Interesting paradigm shifts have occurred. An interview has gone from a job function to an event worthy of a phone call to mom; I no longer screen my calls, and in fact, am excited when the phone rings; and, of course, the worst of it all: I’ve become the target of a billion-dollar industry of profiteers who promise to give my search the winning edge, but they’re no longer contingency recruiters on biz dev calls. That, at least, would represent a career opportunity.

Let me be clear: I actually admire those who have figured out a way to monetize providing services to the unemployed. Most marketers would probably, conducting a SWOT analysis, point to the fact that categorically, those without jobs who are “actively looking” likely lack disposable income. But, you see, that’s capitalism in action.

Perhaps the most common service offered is professional resume writing. These services promise that, for anywhere between 400 and 800 dollars, a professional resume writer will not only critique your resume, but also work with you to create a resume guaranteed to “break through the clutter” by using better verbs to craft the “story of your career.” Corporate recruiters, apparently, have very strict guidelines for formatting on a resume, and a secret code known only to them and somehow cracked by the Professional Resume Writer’s Association. I must have missed that workshop at ERE, but I suppose so too did a lot of my colleagues, who I have seen commit such violations to code as cut and pasting resumes off of Monster into Word or forwarding horrifically misformatted LinkedIn profiles to hiring managers.

Since there seems to be an interesting amount of conspiracy theory around how recruiters read resumes (if they do at all, since apparently, talent acquisition systems are to candidates what the Meadowlands are to Jimmy Hoffa), I hope to add to the body of knowledge and present, from first-hand observation, how recruiters read resumes. And we do. Hundreds of them, every day, but there’s a method to our madness: overstaffed, overworked, we’ve developed a short-hand to get through that resume. It involves a few simple steps.

1. Recruiter tears off cover letter (or, more likely, doesn’t bother opening the attachment in the ATS). Since most resumes lead with an objective statement (which are always subjective, in a nice bit of irony), we can only handle so much generic doublespeak in one sitting. Recruiters also don’t normally read objective statements, because the objective is pretty apparent when you send in a resume … to get a job. Everything else is window dressing.
2. Recruiter looks at the candidate’s mailing address. If it’s going to require relocation or there’s any chance the commute is going to come up during salary negotiation, then on to the next candidate. Many resumes do indicate that the person will pay out of pocket to relocate and interview, which raises an immediate red flag as to why. We have enough desperation in our lives already. We’re recruiters, for heaven’s sake. This rule, of course, only applies to applicants, not passive candidates. If you’re top talent with a niche skill set, we’ll relocate you from Zanzibar, if that’s what it takes. Unless, of course, you require visa sponsorship. We have our limits, you know.
3. Recruiter looks at company name. If we, in our infinite wisdom of all companies, do not recognize the company, we will move on, because there’s so much truth that branding is everything. You’re only as good as your last company, unless you have the letters CPA, MD, or JD after your name. Conversely, if the company has been in the news as either an acquisition target or a source of corporate scandal, on to the next resume (assuming the recruiter reads anything BUT resumes, which most do not). So it goes.
4. The candidate’s most recent title must be in the same ballpark as the job for which they are being considered. There are some notable exceptions: candidates coming from the financial services industry, for instance, where we well know that interns are Assistant Vice Presidents, or consulting, where the titles are intentionally vague (Analyst, Associate, etc.) and flat so that everyone can be billed out at the same exorbitant rate. Traditionally, though, if you’re a Marketing Manager applying for a Marketing Manager job, then we’re still reading. If you’re looking for a step up, well, best of luck to you, because we promote from within, which will later be transformed into a selling point when offered a lateral move. If you’re looking to gain experience and aren’t title conscious, and are willing to lop off silly corporate constructs such as the word “Senior” or “Executive” from your title for a clearly better opportunity, you are the ideal candidate. But not for our corporate culture, which as a heavily matrixed, hierarchical organization, is obsessed with titles as a designator of worth. Without them, how would you know your place?
5. If you don’t require relo, work for a brand name company and have the same title as the position you’re applying for, then it’s on to the first listed experience on the resume. Then we become Goldilocks … too heavy or too light? Here’s a rule of thumb. Refer back to the job description. Take the number of years of experience and add two … postings are a lot like dating in reverse. If the job’s looking for five years, the recruiter is looking for seven; 10 years means 12, and so on, until you hit the 20-year mark, whereby it’s onto the next resume because you’re “overqualified.” Besides, anyone who began their career prior to 1985 likely wears cardigans, talks about Andy Rooney around the water cooler, and will complain incessantly about how cold the office is when they’re not using their Dictaphones to compose correspondence. It’s a strange new world out there … and your Facebook page does little to convince the recruiter otherwise. Although interesting Matlock widget … It’s all about millennial now, which is why recent college grads are so successful in finding immediate, meaningful employment.
6. Education check: Recruiters assign a baseline value of zero for a bachelor’s degree in a related discipline, which is to say, none of you crazy liberal or fine arts majors who spent your way doping through college while the rest of us were studying differential calculus need apply. We’re still bitter. A.A. on a resume? Take 12 steps back. Add one point for a Master’s, add two points for an M.B.A. (2.5 if it’s from a top-25 program), and subtract one point for a PhD. You’re probably either too smart to function here, or you’ve come crawling back from the Ivory Tower with a foiled plan B and the debt to prove it. Subtract the term “viable candidate” if secondary education has come from an institution whose admissions criteria involve clicking through pop-up ads or calling an 800 number on the side of the bus. While you’re obviously easy to close, we’ve got our shareholders to think about, and you’ve demonstrated little knowledge of the concept of “ROI.” The Phoenix will rise from the ashes only in myth. In reality, you should have saved those 30k for the premiums you’re about to pay on our “comprehensive” health benefits package. Oh, yeah. And we offer tuition reimbursement. Eh, too late.

Average time for these steps for an experienced corporate recruiter: 15 to 20 seconds. If you pass this initial scan, maybe then we’ll drill down past the keywords, unless you’re so impressive you’re out of our price range.

Alternatively, if you have a funny name, or if there’s obvious irony (a “Lean Executive” at Krispy Kreme, for instance, or the recent Monster headline, “Desperate Single Mom Willing To Do Anything”) or mention your work as a runway model or professional athlete, prepare to have your resume circulated to the entire staffing department.

Of course, what do I know? If I was such an expert, I’d have a job. Like being a professional resume writer.

In this article, I refer to my experience turning in a leased car. I always treat the companies I encounter anonymously; let’s just say this organization’s first name rhymes with “smells” and its last name rhymes with “cargo.”

Its logo, a cute little stagecoach pulled by a team of fast-moving horses, is so engaging that one can almost smell the sweat and manure. But enough about sweat. Let’s talk about manure.

When I asked the company representative where to return the car, the rep said I could not return it to a dealer (unlike every other leased car I owned). The rep explained they only had ONE (1!) drop-off location in Georgia. I would have to drive there … so much for convenience. On the other hand, the drop-off point could have been Guatemala.

A few days after I delivered the car to the inconvenient drop-off location, I received a bill for damage to the door. Since I had taken 360-degree pictures of the car before I turned it in, I knew the charge was nonsense. I called another customer-service rep in the End-of-Lease Department. After a short argument, they said they would look at the pictures I sent and call me back in 24 to 48 hours.

144 hours later

After 144 hours, I called again. This time I struck pay-dirt! An agent answered the phone in a droll, bored voice (I could tell I was interfering with his latte). I explained my situation and, although he sounded greatly inconvenienced, he grudgingly went to look at the pictures I emailed 144 hours earlier.

When he came back on the line, he said my pictures were inadequate. Another department would have to examine them (apparently, full-color digital photographs taken with a very expensive camera are insufficient proof when compared to personal opinion).

I said, “I was told that last week.”

He replied, and I quote, “Well, I’m telling you now.”

Stunned silence.

I said, “Can you please have your name?”

He was not intimidated. “M”, he drolled. (Again, I will be socially sensitive and not name names; suffice it to say M is the first name of a jar used to store fruits and vegetables).

I pressed onward. “And, what is the name of your supervisor?”

“We do not give out that information. You have to go through our process. You can’t just ask to talk to a supervisor.”

My mind raced: “Am I in a stooge in one of those reality TV shows?”, “Is Howie Mandel going to pop out of my phone?” … “Was ‘M’ in training for a government healthcare position?”, “Will I have to sacrifice a blemish-free goat before I can talk to a supervisor?”

Fast-Forward

I could go on about “M” and his smells-cargo employer, but the real point of this article is that hiring front-line customer service people is more important than most managers believe. Organizations are happy to get our money, but the true test of sincerity begins when things go wrong. Unless the organization is the only game in town, customer service is one of its few opportunities to show customers it cares — or not.

Clearly, M and his employer cared less.

A good customer service agent needs five critical skills. Some can be trained and some cannot. They need skills to: 1) empathize with the customer’s plight; 2) listen and gather relevant information; 3) use questions to clarify the problem; 4) engage in joint problem solving; 5) and, do follow-up.

Why These Five?

When a customer complains, he or she is experiencing two problems: 1) a task problem with the product or service; and 2) an emotional problem. Most people would agree they are not in the mood to solve problems when are angry or upset. This is why customer-service reps need empathizing skills. Empathizing helps the customer and representative relate to each other.

Only when the customer calms down can the representative begin to ask questions and gather information. This skill requires active listening skills and well-honed questions. Discovering what went wrong, and why, minimizes the potential for a repeat problem and maximizes the potential for a happy customer.

Joint problem-solving is the natural next step. It’s the time when customer and organization come together to work out a mutually acceptable solution. This does not mean giving away the store, nor does it mean the customer is entirely wrong (see the M-jar, smells-cargo example above). Finally, it takes some form of action in the form of follow-up or next-steps.

So what should recruiting look for in an applicant? What is trainable? Well, based on your experience, do you find it easier to hire someone without empathy and tell him or her to be empathetic, or hire someone with natural empathy skills? Is it easier to hire someone who is not smart enough, or hire someone intelligent enough to probe for information? Is it easier to hire someone with poor listening skills, or, hire someone with natural listening skills?

Back to the Ranch

From a customer’s perspective, M-Jar was in the wrong job. Instead of customer service, I would suggest he seek a career that used his natural ability to be snide and insolent … a career where he does not have to deal with intelligent life forms …

As for the company who hired M? Its hiring system either failed to identify all the critical factors important to performing a customer service job in a competitive environment, or it had no clue what to look for.

As for me, I’m out there sharing my story about a well-known company and using them as a personal example of what not to look for in a customer service job.