I have never met an unhappy, urologist anywhere.

You may not have thought you want to be a urologist. That’s perfectly understandable. But after watching a video — one that ended with the quote above — that won a marketing award, you may change your mind.

This clip called ”Why Urology?” was just honored with a platinum from the International AVA Awards competition. That’s a contest put on by the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals, which gets about 1,700 entries.

The video was produced by the American Urological Association, and has been viewed nearly 5,000 times on YouTube.

It’s a mistake you want to ask yourself if you’re making.

The story speaks to how often employers waste time, money, and creative horsepower when it comes to attracting and retaining talent because they put their attention in the wrong place.

So here’s the story … 

Years ago a friend of mine was telling me how much he loved his Audi. In the same “I love my Audi” story, he mentioned that he will never buy another one again … ever. Before I could ask how Statement A leads to Statement B, he told me that the one and only Audi dealer in the area was a nightmare to deal with. The car-buying experience felt sleazy and the service experience after the sale continued to be a horror show.

He then went on to tell me about another customer of he had met. That customer had brought his car to a dealership out of state for the very same reason my friend disliked this particular dealership.

I knew the name of the dealership, but never had an opinion of them prior to his story.

Fast forward two weeks.

I hear this dealership’s ad on the radio. It is incredibly creative and clever.

When it’s over, I think:

“Isn’t this classic. They spend all this money and creativity coming up with clever ways to get people through the door, only to drive them back out the door by the experience they deliver.”

Since I love analogies and tend to see them everywhere, I then found myself thinking:

“Isn’t this a perfect analogy for what employers do? They spend all kinds of time and money trying to get the best and brightest through their doors, only to drive them back out — or drive them crazy — by the frustrating, disrespectful, and spirit-crushing work experience they deliver.”

Wouldn’t it make sense to invest just as much time, money, and creative horsepower delivering the work experience you promise as you do making a compelling promise to job prospects?

Doesn’t it make sense to invest as much in making sure talent stays once they come through the door, rather than creating a revolving door experience?

Doesn’t it make sense to create a work experience that makes your employees not only happy to stay, but also want to tell their talented friends: “This is an awesome place to work. When there’s an opening, I’ll let you know”?

Think of how much money you could help your employer save in recruiting costs if you helped them create a work experience that turned your employees into a volunteer recruiting firm.

If all this makes sense to you, here’s what you can do about it.

Share this article with your leadership team and suggest that you, as a team, examine:

• Whether you truly deliver the work experience your recruiting campaign promises.
• Whether you really know what kind of work experience you deliver.
• Whether you truly understand the key components of an inspiring, commitment-generating work experience … and how to deliver them.
• Whether your managers know how to manage in ways that inspire loyalty, passion, and pride.
• How much you are investing in telling the world you are a great place to work, and how much you are investing in actually being a great place to work.
• If you are doing the things Todd described in the comment here that are the things that make a workplace a good workplace: appreciation, interesting work, the chance to make a difference, opportunities for new skills, work/life balance, recognition, flexibility, health and retirement benefits, nice co-workers, smart co-workers, good managers but not micromanagers, training, a good location, money, promotions, and raises.

Share this article with your employees as a conversation starter. Find out from them whether they would recommend you as an employer, and why … or why not. Don’t just do this as a survey. I have found over the years that interviews and focus groups provide much richer, more actionable information. I don’t recommend replacing surveys with them, but combining the two.

Invest in helping your managers learn:

• What key practices create an inspiring work experience where employees feel not only valued and respected, but they also have the resources, support, and training to do great work.
• What key human needs drive employee performance and engagement, and how to create a work experience that satisfies these human needs. Here are just a few: the need for meaning and purpose, the need to learn and grow, and the need to feel a sense of control over one’s experience.
• How to become more mindful of critical Managerial Moments of Truth that affect employee engagement and morale. Examples of such critical Managerial Moments of Truth include: 1) Onboarding a new employee, and whether it’s a “sink or swim” experience or new hires get the message: “We’re glad you’re here, here’s how we are going to help you succeed”; 2) Giving employees feedback and doing performance reviews; 3) Communicating to employees about major changes; 4) How you ask employees for input, and what you do with that input.
• The critical communication skills that make it comfortable for people with less power — i.e. their direct reports — to speak honestly and openly about difficult issues.
• The myriad of other skills and the managerial practices that bring out the best in employees.

If you are serious about not just getting talent “through the door,” but also keeping them and bringing out the best in them, forward this article to your management team and your direct reports, and get the process rolling.

In this year’s 30-second commercial airing during the fourth quarter on Feb 5, the chimps wreak havoc with their human co-worker during a business trip, ordering 46 banana daiquiris, while brainstorming a poison ivy shampoo.

The chimps have proven to be an audience pleaser since making their debut in CareerBuilder’s first Super Bowl ad in 2005. The company’s three ads all made it into the top 10 in most of the popularity polls. The company reprised the monkey concept the following year, then tried a variety of other concepts, including viewer-conceived ads.

Last year, the chimps returned in an ad called “Parking Lot.” It ranked sixth in the USA Today Super Bowl Ad Meter poll, but prompted a complaint from PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, over the use of chimpanzees. The organization, once monitored by FBI counterterrorism investigators, released a letter from Angelica Huston calling on CareerBuilder not to air the commercial and to never again use chimps.

CareerBuilder explained that it’s again using chimps, despite the complaints of PETA and other animal-rights groups, for the simple reason people like them. “The chimpanzees were brought back by popular demand. It’s been a very successful campaign that job seekers identify with and act upon,” CareerBuilder VP of Communications Jennifer Grasz told Forbes.

Monster, whose 1999 “When I Grow Up” commercial is considered one of the best Super Bowl commercials of all time, has yet to appear on any list of this year’s advertisers. The company last ran a Super Bowl commercial in 2010.

At a per ad cost approaching $3.5 million, the Super Bowl is the most expensive TV buy in the world. CareerBuilder says it’s worth it and sent along these data points:

• Revenue – Over the last seven years, on average, CareerBuilder’s invoicing increased 36% year-over-year in the month following the Super Bowl.  This consistently outpaced year-over-year growth in other months.
• Applications – Over the last seven years, on average, CareerBuilder saw a 24% year-over-year increase in applications to our employers’ jobs in the month of the Super Bowl.
• Traffic - CareerBuilder’s traffic grew 43% year-over-year during the month of the Super Bowl when we first debuted as a Super Bowl advertiser. CareerBuilder has seen continued gains and, in 2011, the company had an 18% year-over-year increase in traffic in the month of the Super Bowl.
• Brand Awareness – Per a Millward Brown awareness tracking study, from 2004 to 2011, CareerBuilder’s unaided awareness grew 29%. Total awareness of CareerBuilder’s TV ads doubled in the week following our first appearance at the Super Bowl.

Indeed: the chief brand officer at Women’s Healthcare Associates, LLC is Anita Jackson. The director of human resources is also Anita Jackson.

In the video below, about 7 minutes long, Jackson and I talk about her unusual dual role at this Oregon gynecology and obstetrics organization. She shares whether this model could work in a larger organization, and how this structure affects the candidate experience.

Anderson is a family-owned outfit, started in 1913 and handling tens of thousands of homes and businesses. It has just under 200 employees but wants to grow about 25% over the next few months, adding 25 “co-workers,” as it sometimes calls them, by the end of the year, and about 25 more early in 2012.

And not only is it hiring, but human resources is part of its marketing to prospective customers. They’re told that “Anderson retains technicians longer so customers get more consistent service.” And they are asked, “How many different technicians have handled your account during the past 24 months?”

Anderson is hiring in Illinois, Missouri, Wisconsin, and Indiana. The business is cyclical, with fewer pests in the winter, ants arriving in the spring, a slightly slower summer, and ants and yellowjackets in the fall.

It’s playing up its careers as being interesting, pretty stable (see graphic at left) and always in demand, as well as environmentally friendly. That last part of the value proposition, O’Hara says, is a biggie both for customers and recruits. Rather than offering just a few “green” products, the whole company is based around trapping, not using rodenticides. Rodenticides suck up a lot of resources when they’re produced, he says, and they also can end up in dumpsters.

This approach means more labor, more expertise. It’s so different from what O’Hara says competitors do, that the company doesn’t recruit from competitors. “Trying to weed technicians off of a tank is hard,” he says. “Communicators, service, heart, attitude — that’s what we’re about. It’s not the traditional ‘see and spray.’”

Anderson is also touting its community involvement. Carrie Missele, a regional sales manager I talked to, is particularly fired up about a program where if the firm adds 25 people before this year’s out, it’ll donate $5,000 to the Northern Illinois Food Bank.

This isn’t a sexy industry — “A stigma we need to overcome,” O’Hara says. So the company is doing a number of things. For one, not finding enough success with career offices and career fairs at schools, it’s talking to professors about the company, about their students, who might want to be an intern, and so on.

It’s bringing in people for internships where they rotate through different parts of the company, and then do an open-ended project at the end where they present ideas for improving Anderson. Some interns can then come back a second summer, and help put on the intern program for first-year interns. O’Hara says he’s also going to be working with a (very successful) public charter school called “Urban Prep,” in Chicago. Students will spend a couple weeks shadowing Anderson employees, and then will receive a paid trip to a university. O’Hara believes that once the student actually sets foot on a university and knows it’s within their reach to receive an education and have a good career, they’ll be more likely to want to go to college.

O’Hara said he initially thought people might want to read things like facts about animals on Facebook, but that he wisened up. “Nobody wants to hear that,” he says. They want to know, “where does this fit in with my life?” So the Facebook page has videos about life at the company.

There’s more. They’re trying to hire more women (and three female technicians have started in the last five months, after not having one in many years; O’Hara attributes this partly to having female recruiters). They’re trying mentoring programs. They’re trying to get more employee referrals. Past interns are appearing at career fairs and sales parties, like a party held at a race track. “When you get one of your students there,” O’Hara says, “the response is much different.” It used to be tough to compete at fairs against a company like Anheuser-Busch, he says, but after all of the above the company has been trying, “we actually have a line now.”

The Medium vs the Message

There’s more going on offline than online.

A key finding of the research is that social networking is done more offline than online; the most common type of social networking is face-to-face or over the phone. This is a tough pill to swallow for those who worship the god of digital media, but the conventional wisdom is based on confusing the medium with the message. Social networking is what people are naturally driven to do; online social media is just the mechanism through which it’s done.

One size does not fit all. The research shows that social networkers have different reasons why they use their networks. These reasons are intrinsic to each individual: if you want to engage with them you need to tailor your message to them. If your social media initiatives are designed to reach the widest possible audience, then there’s a lot who will simply tune it out.

It’s About Engagement

The conventional wisdom about social media is that it’s a vehicle to reach the widest possible audience at the lowest cost — 467 first-level contacts connect you to 88,654 second-level contacts and 12,674,812 third-level contacts; Facebook has 600 million users, and so on. Getting dazzled by the numbers obscures the fact that success with social media requires engagement. And engagement means connecting with people who have shared passions and interests. Research on the effectiveness of tweets as a means to deliver a message shows that that happens most when tweets are re-tweeted — which only happens if the message resonated with the person reading it … an engaged follower. A “like” by a friend is more likely to be noticed than an ad, and even more if the friend commented on whatever it was they liked.

And engagement means that people are more likely to talk with their friends about the topic, whether it’s a product or a job, or interesting place to work. This is why talent communities can only succeed if they build engagement. The conventional wisdom about the talent communities is that they should include the largest number of possible candidates, with the idea that some will become employees. That approach doesn’t build engagement. It builds a database. The people in it are not likely to be retweeting your jobs or sharing them on Facebook.

The Gallup research shows that prospective customers are much more likely to try your product or service or advocate on your behalf if they hear good things about you from an engaged customer in their social network. They are much less likely to trust online advertising or corporate-sponsored Facebook pages or Twitter feeds. Candidates will behave the same way — if they’re engaged with you they will mention it to their friends, and those friends are more likely to be attracted to your jobs, more so than any amount of tweeting and self-promotion you may do through SEO for your jobs.

Old Habits Die Hard 

Much of recruiting has to do with advertising; the enduring popularity of job boards is testimony to that. Before that, so much of print advertising was devoted to help-wanted ads. It’s hard work to come up with leads on candidates and then reach out and try and to get them interested in your jobs. We’d all like to just post a job and wait for the resumes to roll in. When social media came along the most natural thing to do was to try and get those jobs in front of as many people as possible. That was the message peddled by ad agencies — the former middlemen in the job-posting business. Hence the obsession with click-through rates, impressions, views, etc. That may work for jobs where the requirements are a pulse and the lack of a felony (and sometimes only the first) but it usually doesn’t work for jobs requiring specialized skills. Do it too much and you’re just filling the channel with noise that no one’s paying any attention to.

Advertising doesn’t build engagement but a focused message, tailored to a narrow segment resonates. Talent communities are most effective when they include like-minded people who share a passion for their work. Do it right and you have passive candidates engage with you in ways not possible through advertising. Do it wrong and you’ve got the social media equivalent of spam.

Inside this modest, even nondescript brick building is the Conspiracy. I capitalize it because I’m playing along with the preposterous notion that it was selected because of grammatical significance to be part of the official name of the organization that inhabits suite 200 here on Fort Worth’s Magnolia Avenue.

“Conspiracy,” explains the man whose name is also part of the title, “is a collective noun. It represents the whole.” At another point he tells me, “The intellectual power of the organization comes from the whole.”

I do not question his explanation. It has the ring of HR about it.

Maintaining his own name as part of the title of what once was called Starr Tincup signals continuity; a heritage name, he adds. I do not question this either. It has the ring of marketing wisdom about it.

Thus was Starr Tincup rechristened The Starr Conspiracy, says the man. His name is Starr, Bret Starr. A year ago he bought out his partner Bill Tincup, then promptly made partners of four of his long-time associates.

Documents that have come into my possession (and which I share with the world here) more fully detail the name change. The word “conspiracy,” says a document bearing the cryptic seal of the organization — a be-tentacled octopus with an all seeing eye – ”denotes a group of persons working in secret to influence perceptions and outcomes.”

The inclusion of “Starr” is as I was told. The document notes, “While Mr. Starr generated the creative spark that resulted in the founding of the agency, the current partners, consultants, account managers, copywriters, and designers surpass Mr. Starr in every functional area. However, by keeping “Starr” in the name, the brand benefits from historic brand equity.”

This then is The Starr Conspiracy. A marketing agency that offers no portfolio, mentions no clients, and prohibits the merest tweet of where its co-conspirators are traveling. And yet,  it has been engaged by hundreds of vendors to the human resource industry. The document says the Conspiracy has become a $20 million business.

What exactly is this business? Business-to-business marketing for HR vendors, many of them (but not all) software and tech firms. The Conspiracy does not do recruitment branding, employer branding, career fair posters, or any form of job advertising.

Except sometimes they will when a client needs help, says Starr talking to me by phone. (“We talk on the phone a lot,” is an admission I found in the document.)

If you have read this far and not yet seen The Starr Conspiracy’s website, I will pause while you do. Pay attention to the Airstream in the video. Nothing will happen. Click here.

Now is this an agency you would hire to market your performance management system, or a new comp and benefits module, or onboarding program or, or, or? No?  Good. The Conspiracy doesn’t want you.

“We are not for everybody. We don’t want everybody,” Starr declares. “If a marketing idea doesn’t make you nervous. If it doesn’t make your stomach queasy,” he adds, “it’s probably not a very good idea.”

Should I be hearing this? He has already confessed to not providing client references, apparently preferring that prospects vet the company on the strength of the ideas it offers them, rather than the work done for others.

Starr, though is relentless. “We are a good match for companies who understand they have to be noticed,” he says. Companies “shouldn’t try to appeal everyone,” he advises, “because in trying to appeal to everyone, you appeal to no one.”

Shortly after making that pronouncement, the phone call is momentarily disrupted. Starr mumbles something about the phone service, then declares he has a meeting he must attend. It is almost 4:30 on a Friday afternoon in Texas where he is. What kind of meeting would a Conspiracy need to be holding then?

I hang up my phone and check to see if the doors are all locked.

Every recruiting leader wants top candidates, but the standard approach used by most recruiters simply doesn’t work. A more precise data-driven approach that leverages complete understanding of the attraction factors can give you a competitive edge. Market research can reveal:

1. What it would take for top talent to look at and consider your firm/jobs;
2. What are the best information channels influence to top talent;
3. What is required to “trigger them” to apply; and
4. What expectations have to be met before they will accept a job.

Implementing a Recruiting Market Research Effort

Building a market research function isn’t rocket science, but there are certain action steps you should consider when getting started, including:

1. Partner with existing market research and product marketing functions within the business to learn about their best practices and tools they may be able to grant you access to. (Don’t forget to inquire about ongoing coaching and advice as well.)
2. Recruiting someone with marketing research knowledge and experience to run the effort. This is one of those cases where training a subject matter expert the intricacies of recruiting would be less resource-exhausting than training a recruiter how to be a market research expert.
3. Put together a strong business case for additional program funding (it’s unlikely you have enough surplus in your existing budget). Work with the CFO’s office to ensure that the benefits targeted are credible and that your approach for proving ROI is airtight.
4. Decide what information you need to inform your efforts, and what types of data could be analyzed to provide that information.
5. Develop a long list of possible data sources that could provide the data needed to develop the information for each of the key talent segments your function must recruit for. Commonly overlooked sources include desirable individuals who would not consider your firm, current top prospects, current or past candidates, and new hires.
6. Test the accuracy, reliability, suitability of format and cost to obtain of each data source, prioritizing and selecting those providing the optimal mix.
7. Design a simple method to collect, collate, categorize, analyze, and tag the data that will power your effort.
8. Determine how you will make information actionable by identifying not only how the information produced from your analysis will be communicated, but also how it will be embedded in core processes.

The Top 10 Subjects on Which Information Is Needed

The job search process — you must understand how top talent goes about looking for an opportunity. Identify the specific steps they take and the timeline that they follow when considering a job change. Also identify who they consult with throughout the process.

Identify channels of influence/communication – use surveys or focus groups to identify specifically where top talent source their information from and spend a great deal of time. You should learn about how top prospects use:

• Social media — what social media sites do they frequent (i.e. LinkedIn, Facebook, Flickr, Yelp, Twitter, etc.) Would a jobs-related message there excite them or turn them off?
• Internet/Mobile — how they use the Internet, both from the desktop and from mobile devices. What online outposts do they visit most frequently? What blogs do they read and what RSS feeds do they subscribe to? Do they listen to podcasts? What electronic forums/chat rooms do they frequent?
• Media — what magazines, publications, journals or newspapers do they read, either the paper or online version? What radio or TV programs do they tune into? Would they read an ad or must a mention be within the narrative content?
• Message preference — what type of messages will they read, ignore, or reject (i.e. electronic e-mail, text, video, tweets, Facebook posts, voice or even snail mail)? Under what conditions would they return a direct message from an unknown recruiter?
• Job sites — what job feeds do they use and what job boards (if any) do they visit frequently looking for a job? On what sites do they post their resumes? What must a job post description contain to get them excited?
• Corporate career sites — what does it take to get them to visit a corporate career/ jobs site? What factors will cause them to drop out before applying?
• Professional association/trade events — what organizations do they join and what meetings do they attend (professional or social)? Would they ever attend a job fair?
• Employer rating sites — what employee rating or rant sites do they visit? Does the information change their job search? (Glassdoor, Jobitorial, etc.)
• Videos — where do they view videos (i.e. YouTube or Flickr)?
• Talent competitors — what firms do the target candidates consider during their job search? Which firms do they finally select?

Identify the message that is required to get their initial attention — use your research to identify what a message must look like and contain to ensure that a quick glance at it will get your target’s immediate attention. After developing some sample messages, use a focus group to pre-test them.

Identify what excites top prospects about a job or company — to refine your messaging you must identify what factors about an industry, company, or job excite your target audience enough to drive them to apply, i.e. high pay, job security, interesting work, a green environment, a great location, an opportunity to learn, etc.)

Identify possible “turnoffs” — in addition to understanding factors that excite, you must also identify the factors that are turnoffs. Because you cannot control the information available on the Internet, you must first find out what negatives about your firm and jobs are easy to find, and develop/test “countering messages” to make sure they successfully overcome published negatives.

For not-looking prospects, identify what it takes to get them to enter the job-search process — if you don’t know already, currently employed individuals who are “not active lookers” cannot be attracted using active approaches. If you are targeting individuals who are not actively seeking jobs, it is critical that you identify the specific “triggers” that would excite them enough to enter into job search mode.

Identify the factors that cause top prospects to take the time to apply — it takes a lot more to get a top prospect or a non-job-looker to take the time required to apply for a job. As a result, your research must identify the drivers or factors that will overcome their natural resistance to applying for a job. Once you identify those factors, prepare and pretest your messages to ensure that they drive candidates to take desirable recruiting actions like visiting your website, applying for a position, or making a call to a recruiter.

Identify the best ways to identify potential referrals — because employee referrals produce such a high volume and improved quality of candidate, use your market research tools to identify the best approaches for identifying and selling referrals. Provide that information to your employees so that they can target their referral efforts.

For active candidates, identify where they see job information — although it takes less work to get active candidates to apply, the very best actives have numerous firms in mind. As a result, use your research methods to identify the specific places and locations where your top “active prospects” would likely see and read an announcement of either an open position or a recruiting-related event. You should also consider putting an identifying code, phone number, or unique web address in each message in order to allow you to later identify which ones actually drew the most interest.

Don’t forget follow-up market research — in order to ensure that you “got it right” and to continually improve, gather follow-up source and influence information from a sample of applicants, candidates, and finalists. In addition, always ask new hires during onboarding what factors attracted them, caused them to say yes, and what factors almost caused them to say no. Use this information to refine both your market research and your recruiting process.

Final Thoughts

Recruiting leaders can learn a lot from competitive fishermen. You cannot even begin to be a mediocre competitive angler without fully understanding the interests, locations, habits and feeding routines of your target — i.e. the trophy fish. You can of course use intuition or luck, but the best competitive fishermen have long ago shifted to the scientific approach, which includes depth finders, temperature gauges, and electronic fish finders.

In the same light, recruiting must move away from traditional unstructured trial-and-error approaches and instead shift toward more scientific and data-driven research approaches. If you are among the majority of recruiting leaders who have hiring managers continually complaining that they are not seeing top candidates, your lack of market research and not “fully understanding your prospects/candidates” may be to blame. As the job-search process becomes more complex and global, you may soon find that there is no alternative other than adopting a market research model in the recruiting function. Don’t wait too long. There simply won’t be time to catch up.

Our brand has taken an absolute battering over the last 18 months. -Jon Tait, of BP

That’s for sure. (You’ve seen the coffee video.) Tait’s the head of global attraction at BP, talking about the aftermath of the colossal oil spill that killed 11 people and spilled millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. The company is launching its first “people-based” recruiting campaign; more on that in a minute.

Tait says that in the fall of 2010, BP researched what people thought of BP, and how that compared to what they thought of competitors. It used LinkedIn for the surveys; the company’s user conference in Las Vegas today is where Tait talked about this effort.

BP found out that a lot of people — about 80% — didn’t know BP was hiring. They didn’t know other Big Oil companies were hiring either, but they knew tech companies were adding headcount. BP learned that 60% of people it wanted to hire are passive candidates, a target market it hadn’t been targeting much.

The good news it got was that more than 50% of people still had an interest in working for BP, and rated the quality of its workforce high, and its technology at least on par with competitors’.

People’s biggest concerns were the company’s financial sturdiness; its safety record; and their own long-term career goals, and whether they fit in BP.

BP’s brand — the perception it’s going for — is about bringing brilliant minds together with technology at a massive scale to meet the world’s energy needs.

Its recruitment advertising has changed, consistent with that brand, but using employees to describe it in human terms. 

It used to say things about exploring Alaska and other messages that were really about the company in a more detached, less touchy-feely way. Its new ads feature employees talking about why they’re inspired by their work; how they feel when they go home (exhausted, but ready to be renewed and refreshed with new opportunities when they awaken); how the company is socially responsible; and the idea that it’s made up of tens of thousands of “amazing stories.”

In a nutshell, it’s now spreading this brand message through stories: stories, Tait says, not of BP but of Carter or Farah or others it has featured on its website and elsewhere.

As for social media: Tait jokes that the way companies are using social media is similar to the way teenagers feel about sex: “You think you should be doing it, but you don’t know how,” he says.

He says that the live CNN broadcast of the BP well being capped was a defining moment of BP’s social-media usage. BP called up CNN to say that the coverage wasn’t accurate, and that an important tweet is on the way. CNN read the tweet on the air, one that got BP’s message out correcting CNN’s report, and one that left CNN looking confused about the whole subject.

It has courted journalists, becoming much more proactive in talking to journalists about its drilling business. Tait feels that media coverage has generally improved.

Anyhow, the stories, Tait says, are just “one small step” in BP’s branding. They generated applause when he showcased them at LinkedIn’s expo.

“They say a crisis reveals your true character,” Tait says. “I totally saw that with my colleagues at BP.”

• Market segmentation — an approach that separates top performers and innovators into a distinct segment, so that recruiting could distinguish between the unique expectations of top performers and the completely different expectations of average candidates.
• A scientific approach to get in front of their eyes — surveys or in-depth interviews with top prospects to determine the best location for them “to see” job postings or employer-brand-influencing content.
• A databased approach to identify decision-triggers — periodic focus groups asking top non-job lookers (i.e. passives) what factors about the job and company must be present in order to actually trigger them to consider your job, and in-depth behavioral profiles that reveal which factors lead to complete application/acceptance.

You Don’t Know Jack

What recruiters don’t know about candidates is extensive. For example, it is extremely rare for consumer-oriented companies to even make note that a candidate is a regular customer. Hiring managers interview candidates without realizing that even a mediocre candidate experience might drive them away from their brand as a consumer. Few companies have a formal process to identify the job acceptance criteria of top candidates.

Most recruiters believe they know “candidates,” but when you drill down into their knowledge in specific instances, you realize that the knowledge is limited to generalizations full of stereotyped assumptions. It’s not entirely the recruiters’ fault; few human resource leaders (possibly because few have spent time in recruiting) seem open to investing in market research to arm them with data. Recruiters have been forced to rely solely on ad-hoc information garnered from interviews, and informal conversations with candidates that often lack insight into day-to-day behavior outside the job search. It is my argument that if recruiting is to ever move from an art to a science and to prove its business impact, recruiting leaders must implement an in-depth market research practice.

Prospect market research is the process of systematically identifying and exploiting the job search approach and the decision-making criteria used by top prospects

Key Learnings

Other Business Functions Have Already Made the Transition — Almost every consumer-touching business function already leverages market research. Sales, marketing, brand management, customer service, and even product development long ago shifted to a data-based model. Other aspects of HR use tools like 360s, employee surveys, and exit interviews to better understand the internal audience, but external audience research is one of the most important but most-ignored aspects of the strategic recruiting process (along with quality-of-hire metrics and sales training).

I estimate that less than 10% of corporate recruiting functions have ever flirted with conducting real market research on their prospects. Most recruiters and recruiting leaders argue that they are simply too busy to do this research. Unfortunately, it’s quite possible that the high workload may in part be caused by their lack of a understanding of their target, which results in ineffective messaging and the poor placement of job announcements. If you’re getting a high volume of low-quality candidates who barely know your firm, a lack of market research may be the culprit.

Moving from one job to another is equivalent to buying a house — Most in recruiting severely underestimate the complexity of the decision to switch jobs, equating the job-search decision with the simple and unsophisticated purchase of a Starbucks coffee or a Diet Pepsi. However, if you expect to land top candidates and those who are currently employed, you need to realize that moving from one company to another is a life-changing decision.

As a recruiter, you are selling something that is the equivalent of buying a house or a car, because it’s a major decision that impacts everyone in the family. The cavalier attitude comes from an over-emphasis on “active candidates” who will go out of their way to find and apply for a job, but if you’re trying to attract a top prospect who already has a job and multiple career choices, you better “know them” and their decision criteria backward and forward or you will never see an application from them.

The job search process literally changes almost every day — Knowledge about candidate search behavior like most knowledge might become obsolete in less than six months. Take a step back and think about it: nearly every day the news features an announcement of a new technology or app related to communicating, making referrals, or finding a job. Do candidates use Foursquare? Do they want to apply for jobs using a mobile device? Do they find out about a company from their website or on Facebook or Twitter? Do they use Glassdoor, Quora, or LinkedIn to find out about an organization’s negatives? Does this generation search for jobs in a different way?

You can’t actually “know” what candidates are up to without continuous market research. One of the reasons that firms are struggling to prove the ROI of social media recruiting is because we really don’t know precisely how and when these new communications tools are being used by the different market segments. You can no longer be satisfied simply knowing that these new communications and networking tools exist; you need to know how top prospects are actually using them as communications channels and job-search tools.

Job expectations are constantly changing — Speaking of different expectations … are you having difficulty recruiting from the different generations? I laugh at most of the junk science used to describe the expectations of the different generations. Almost all of the assumptions about generations are based on broad global generalizations based on age rather than data-driven segmented market research.

Assuming that everyone within a 20-year generation that lives in any country of the world can be attracted using the same recruiting approach is simply silly. Incidentally, this segmented market research information can also tell you how you need to change your jobs so that they become exciting to the specific individual or market segment you are targeting. Without market research, you can only rely on trial and error to fully understand these changing expectations.

Next week: Recruiting Market Research Action Steps and Information Gathering Targets

Posters remorse happens a lot when it comes to job postings, and as a result sometimes recruiters may not fully appreciate the power of advertising their open positions. In fact, when speaking about job postings, many technical recruiters see them as an ineffective way to attract talent.

Not surprisingly, a lot of the apathy around postings is directly related to job boards, even though over the years leaders within this space have adapted their offering to make sure that postings get distributed to more relevant candidates. Forward-thinking job boards have made significant strides in developing a solid job distribution network, and yet recruiters generally remain unimpressed with the “post and pray” model.

You cannot really blame recruiters for being disappointed in the results they are getting; however, there is a need to address the posters’ accountability in the whole process.

Job postings do work. They can attract great candidates both passive and active. They can also generate referrals. Passive job seekers often glance at the job email that arrives fresh in their inbox each morning. Recruiters tend to forget that they have a significant influence on the response quality they receive.

Over the last 12 months the number of poorly written postings being submitted to sites within the technology recruitment field has increased significantly. Fewer candidates combined with low-quality postings means poor results for everyone. As a result, organizations are investing more in the proactive searching and networking side of things, but not on postings. In fact the lack of focus on quality postings is getting worse, and some organizations are missing out big time.

Postings do have a place in the talent acquisition mix; they can even act as the recruiter’s recruiter if optimized correctly.

Below are some tips to help you increase your chances of success with job postings.

• Write clear and readable job postings that clearly and unambiguously state the job title.
• Place key skills or desired associated skills near the beginning of the job description field so they can be viewed highly in relevant searches.
• Avoid the temptation to make your job postings simply a list of skills, as you may miss or deter potential candidates even where your job posting features highly in their search results.
• Conversely, padding the job posting with overly descriptive content or irrelevant skills will lower the job advertisement’ss ranking. Although the job posting may match more job seeker searches, it will not feature as high in the order of results and thus reduce the response received.
• Blend in the human aspect. Candidates within the technology world are generally more adverse to change than people within other sectors, even if they are in a role that they don’t like. Use your posting to paint a picture of where you are trying to take them. The more they know about the organization, the more comfortable they will be with the idea of changing roles. They want to know if they will fit in.
• When you can, specify the rate or salary. Contract job postings showing a rate get at least double the applications than those without. Permanent job postings showing a salary get 20 percent more applications than postings showing no salary.
• Where HTML formatting is available, use it to enhance your posting. Emphasize key words however remember less is more.

If you think about the content of your posting and the intended audience then you should see a dramatic improvement in the results you receive. Do not put a posting out there for the sake of it and hope something will stick. Put one out there to help someone find their dream role.

When I interviewed for my position at TMP almost 14 years ago, I really knew nothing about the company, nor did I have an obvious route to learn more. Had I been privy to the TMP work experience conversation, I might have injected some of those nuggets and questions into the interview conversation. Without those gems I was relegated to closing the interview with “I really believe I can make an impact at TPM.” Thankfully, I still got the job. We had a good conversation despite my verbal typo.

Yes, the conversation about the conversation about the conversation can be exhausting. But, there are definitely valid reasons for an employer to be aware of the conversation. While there may not be a finite right or wrong way to determine when, if, and how to engage and guide the conversation, there are some common sense ideas to be considered.

(For those of you who have lost count, I’ve used the word “conversation” 25 times already.)

First of all, think about the conversation from this perspective: anyone can quickly and easily find well-indexed opinions about the workplace of most employers via search engines, message boards, blogs, social media, employee testimonial sites, etc. That’s a given and we should all stipulate that.

Now think about this fact: Anyone who is considering joining your talent community, applying for a position, “liking” your company career page on Facebook, accepting your offer, or even just curious what it’s like to work for your company because they’re having a bad day at work or their friend works there, there’s a good chance that, if they haven’t already, they’re going to do a quick search engine query on “Working at INSERT YOUR COMPANY NAME.” Did you know that approximately 80% of all Internet sessions start on a search engine?

For many employers, much of the online conversation about their workplace that is returned in a search may not be positive. In some cases that may be warranted, but in more cases, it’s merely a subjective sliver of the real experience – let’s face it, some of these employee testimonial sites can lean toward becoming repositories of disgruntled employee opinions – we like company when we’re complaining. That’s not to take away from valid opinions but needs to be considered. I believe the adage about treating me well and I may or may not tell one person; but treat me in a way that I perceive to be unfair, and with the click of a mouse I may tell 500 in my social network, is definitely what’s behind this. But we cannot assume that jobseekers viewing this information know that to be the case so they may apply much more stock to what they’re reading than is perhaps warranted.

So what can employers do at a minimum when faced with a preponderance of negative feedback about their workplace on the Internet?

We need to ensure that your recruiters, hiring managers, and other candidate facing employees — which definitely is a lovely segue to a diatribe about how all your employees should be employer brand broadcasters — are aware of key trends in the conversation, at least to the extent of being able to anticipate what a candidate might see online and have thoughts about how they should respond if that topic arises or if they should proactively bring it up. Possibly that takes the form of a distributed monthly recap and/or reputation audit document.

If a relatively small number of people are citing the same negative item about you online as an employer, note it. If it’s a large number relative to the size of the conversation who are saying the same thing, listen and consider the right next steps –which may consist of engaging in the conversation and offering a different and true perspective; being aware and consciously choosing to do nothing right away but note, track, and make stakeholders aware of it; looking inward to validate or disprove the negative sentiment; building a communication action plan as appropriate; etc. And when and if you need to engage and guide the conversation, use the authentic voices of your employees and communities to offer their perspectives.

Two great places to share first-hand perspectives are your well optimized career website and career social presence. There’s a lot of valid discussion about the importance of optimizing your actual job postings so they appear in search engine results. We should also optimize career content to appear and rank well in search engines. So when a person types into Google “working at Acme,” the employer’s own career content appears in the results too, rather than just the Glassdoors and other similar sites.

In closing, I do need to point out one enormous drawback of the pervasive conversation … a faux verb that I thought we’d laid to rest has returned. Yes, I mean “conversate.” It’s re-entered the lexicon — perhaps it never left — and twice in the last month I’ve been privileged enough to hear references to the need for employers to conversate with their target audiences.

Best of luck in genuinely engaging and conversing with your target audiences. The key is to be thoughtful in your overall approach and resist the impulse to quickly react unless absolutely necessary.

OK, so Yukon would like you to know that there’s more to its territory than a six- to eight-month long winter.

In 2008, it began looking at a new strategy for recruiting, retention, branding, and marketing the new brand. It wanted to better attract youth, Yukon First Nation (aboriginal) candidates, people with disabilities, and others, and do a better job at staffing hard-to-fill jobs.

By the way, if you don’t know where Yukon is — it’s next to Alaska. It’s about the size of Texas, but with only 30-35,000 people (less windy than, say, more southern Canadian areas like Winnipeg, notes Renee Paquin, an HR director in Yukon’s territorial government). Yukon hires social workers, healthcare professionals, environmental professionals, library employees, and others; in all, about 5,000 employees and about 650 jobs posted annually. Some communities can only be reached by airplane.

Paquin says that to arrive at a new employment brand, the Western Canada recruiting ad agency Midlyn Day held focus groups with employees, Yukon residents, and with residents from outside of Yukon. It also conducted telephone interviews with leaders in the organization, senior managers, and HR directors.

The Yukon HR team also looked at existing information it had, such as its annual employee engagement survey, exit surveys, and surveys of people who were hired from outside of the territory.

The result was a “comes with a territory” tagline – but, as ERE junkies know, a recruiting tagline is not a recruiting brand. The brand, the value proposition, the desired reputation, is really, in this case, about what comes with the territory: career opportunities and mobility, the lifestyle and environment, work/life balance, and the ability to make a difference in the world.

Along with the new brand came new materials, which were rolled out this spring and are still being created for various jobs. There are posters. Redone job listings. A new website, again with help from Day Advertising.

“The brand resonated,” says Paquin. “People are really behind it.”

Metrics and results and ROI are still in the works, as the marketing strategy is still being implemented. The posters that targeted First Nation job candidates resulted in a Creative Excellence Award, as did other branding materials created for the campaign.

If your responsible for your company’s campus recruiting efforts, Natasha Singer’s recent article for the New York Times is a must-read. The story highlights ways companies are using student Brand Ambassadors to promote products and services, and generate loyalty via social media, in-store events, and on-campus buzz.

Traditional marketing efforts like print advertising and TV spots are yielding fewer and fewer tangible results, but did you know that this fall, an estimated 10,000 American college students will be working on hundreds of campuses as Brand Ambassadors?

By illustration, Singer’s article cites efforts from three American Eagle student marketers who solicited 50 volunteers to take part in a move-in event at the University of North Carolina. Wearing A.E. Move-In Crew T-shirts, they helped with lifting boxes, handing out swag, and creating a welcoming branded experience for new arrivals, as just one of AE’s 50-campus events.

Target opened up its wallets for a freshman welcome dinner, and its doors for a private late-night shopping experience, complete with DJs and dancing through the aisles.

Mr. Youth, a youth marketing agency, published its list of brands who were best at communicating with freshmen. They included Nike (design your own shoes), Xbox (engage, connect and compete with your friends), and of course Apple (‘nuf said.)

So advice to the campus recruiting teams: Plan together and plan ahead.

1. Check in with your marketing department and find out if they are launching any guerilla marketing events on the college campuses. If yes, get in on it. If no, this is where you can shine. Help them plan something and then work together (isn’t that a great concept) to promote a seamless brand experience from consumer through employee. Give them the list of your target schools (you have that right?) and start there.
2. Work to infuse an employer value proposition that is aligned with the consumer value proposition into all your messages, and don’t sound like anyone else.
3. Make sure you’re careers site has been recently refreshed, is up-to-date and mobile friendly (QR tags are optional), and your social media sites are integrated with your career/jobs information.

Remember: the brands that swim together, win together.

Pfizer Neuroscience employs about 130 people working on neurology, including Autism, psychiatry (schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression), Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and more, out of Groton, Connecticut. Last summer it began an effort to expand what was then a limited Postdoc program, from one person to about 15 or 20.

The result was, in short, a website built in about a month and a half with help from CareerBuilder, honored at Wednesday’s Creative Excellence Awards, and marketed around the science world.

Kate Yannacci is the business manager for Pfizer’s neuroscience unit. Michael Ehlers is the CSO — with the “S” standing for scientific. He came up north to Pfizer from Duke University in North Carolina last summer. He liked Groton — and thought it was beautiful, actually — but he and Yannacci realize it’s not New York or Boston. “In our department, it has been a little bit difficult to recruit the young talent we’re looking for,” Yannacci says. Pretty and on the water, the area doesn’t have the nightlife some want during a three- or four-year fellowship in their 20s or 30s.

So the site included a section on life Groton — though that’s now less of an issue as the unit plans a move to Cambridge, Massachusetts.

To spread the word of the new site, CareerBuilder sent out email campaigns through its resume database to a targeted group of candidates. It also worked on SEO. Patrick Moye, senior product manager at CareerBuilder, says “we have relied on a strong search engine optimization setup behind the site to drive traffic. We don’t do an ongoing SEO strategy with them but the strong foundation we set has really paid off with the traffic they get from search engines” — traffic that he says represents about 70% of the visitors Pfizer Neuroscience gets monthly.

Pfizer Neuroscience has been running ads, with verbiage like you see in the graphic, in Science, and in Nature. It also emailed all major “collaborators” about it — like professors with connections to the research division.

It sponsored scientific meetings around the world, paying a few thousand bucks to make sure the web address got out there. It targeted conferences put on by the neuroscience society and by Alzheimer’s groups.

On top of that, Pfizer is holding two-day symposiums for recruits. The first day, candidates give 20-minute presentations. The second day, they interview. All stay in the same hotel. Nine people attended the first symposium, and four were made offers.

Yannacci says about 100 people applied for jobs in the first wave, around August-September of last year. Now, 10 postdocs are on board. The website will grow, featuring employees’ stories of what they’ve been working on, and more about what’s happening with Pfizer’s brain research. Yannacci is also in the process of deciding how best to use Facebook in the division’s recruiting.

And the livin’ is easy

Reqs are slowin’

No hirin’s nigh.

In the spirit of these August dog days, here’s a little collection of HR snacklets to entertain you and, maybe, even inform you. I swear, though, that it is the former, not the latter, that I intend.

An HR case from Oz.

A government worker was dispatched on a business trip to rural New South Wales, where she was instructed to spend the night. To while away the time, the 40-year-old woman took up with a male acquaintance. During what must have been a particularly frisky rollick, a wall lamp over the bed fell, injuring the woman. She filed for worker’s comp.

When it was denied, she sued, her attorney arguing in court last month that having sex is “normal behavior.” “Having sex,” he said, ” is just one of those things. It’s not the 1920s, after all.”

The court is currently considering a decision. Want more? Go here. There’s even a video. (I know what you’re thinking and it is NOT of that.)

Now let’s turn to vacations.

How do you know when you’re on vacation?

Before the devil foisted the Internet and cell phones upon us, that was easy. You got up after the sun, dressed however you wanted, didn’t go into the office, and did pretty much whatever you wanted.

Nowadays, we need a court and lawyers to tell us. Conveniently, they have.

A vacation, explained a California Court of Appeals a couple weeks ago, is “paid time off that accrues in proportion to the length of the employee’s service, is not conditioned upon the occurrence of any event or condition, and usually does not impose conditions upon the employee’s use of the time away from work.”

What prompted the definition (which, I must point out, doesn’t explain what all those people at beach resorts are doing answering work emails), what got the matter into court, was a disagreement over a sabbatical.

Advanced Micro Devices offered a paid, two-month sabbatical (oh, those good old days) to workers with seven or more years of time in. When Eric Paton quit before taking his sabbatical, AMD claimed he forfeited it. Not so, said Paton. It was accrued over my seven years and, just like vacation time, you owe me, Paton said.

The lower court ruled against him, but the appeals court reversed, sending the matter back to have someone else, maybe a jury, decide when a sabbatical is a vacation and when it’s not.

It did offer some guidance in deciding the “thornier problem” of unconditional sabbaticals. Besides adopting the California Department of Labor Standards and Enforcement guidelines, it added one:  An expectation that the employee will return to work after the sabbatical.

Still with me? Good, because now here’s a suggestion about what to do with all that sabbatical time you have.

Find a job at sea.

There are hundreds, hundreds! of boats looking for crews. They’re on FindACrew.net. If there’s a more romantic, adventurous job board for the wanderer in us, I don’t know it.

The paying jobs want you to have experience. Others don’t care and will take you along for whatever help you can provide.

There’s a Polish sailboat down in Brazil planning a leisurely cruise around South America looking for people willing to share the work for a ride. How about sailing the Aegean aboard a 51′ American ketch?

Play your cards right, and you might end up sailing away just in time to skip the EEO-1.

Help catch pirates.

Crewing a boat around the world not enough? Then I leave you with his opportunity: The European Union is looking for a Pirate Cultural Advisor. It’s not enough that you know how to talk like a pirate. The EU really wants ex-military with a security clearance. Points, presumably, if you sailed the Somali coast and made it through.

Enjoy the rest of your summer.

I’ve personally tracked the photo to eight HR-related sites where it shows up illustrating employee engagement, consulting services, headhunting, and a company’s commitment to diversity recruiting. I know there are more. Google has 19 pages of results.

Is your company among them?

A moment’s digression: Google has a new, handy image search that lets you drag an image into the search box to find where else it appears. You can also upload a picture, search by URL or, with the right extension, right click an image. Google explains it all here.

MarketingProfs.com has a dozen pictures on its list, which it put together as much in fun as to make the point that imagery is not immune to cliche. The images are all stock photos, available at little or no cost, which is one reason they’ve become so ubiquitous.  They are a cheap way to spice up a site.

The downside for recruitment marketers is that like elevator music, no one pays much attention. And when they do, instead of thinking “diversity” (in the case of our suspect picture), they think, “Now where did I see that photo before?”

I found it on the internship page of a company that boasts of being the “best of the best.” It may be, but consider the message communicated by the picture  (and, oh dear, the site has several more offenders). The message it sends is more along the lines of, “We’re just like everyone else.”

Is that what you want candidates to remember? Think of another cliche, the one about a picture being worth 1,000 words. Behind that trite expression is an enormous amount of research that all says the same thing: Images evoke a more powerful response, and are more easily recalled than words.

You can probably guess why. We see the image first, then zero in on parts, just the opposite of how we read. In a journal article a few years ago noted market researcher Dr. Alan Braithwaite, managing director of Ignition Marketing Research, explained it more scientifically:

Images have an immediate impact, as they are perceived holistically rather than in the linear-sequential fashion of verbal accounts. Whereas verbal messages are processed rationally and consciously, visual imagery is perceived and partially processed preconsciously.

You don’t have to be a market researcher, however, to appreciate the value of choosing images wisely. The web has plenty of sites with tips on how to select images. Here’s a simple starter from Brand Innovation Group.

Note the first point BIG makes: Fit images to the concept you are looking to communicate. I’ve sat in on enough meetings to know just how tempting it is to edit an idea, a concept, or a message to fit the image. This is especially true with logos, and thematic color choices.

I very clearly remember one heated creative discussion about choosing the “look and feel” for a website. The design team pitched hard one particularly attractive look. It was slick, modern, almost avant garde, with colors that popped. It was also totally inconsistent with the message we wanted to convey.

So here, in addition to the tips and advice from BIG and others you’ll find online, are mine:

1. DO NOT choose images until you have written out the message and impression you want to convey. Writing it out will (literally) ensure everyone is on the same page. And it will keep you from backing down when the design team comes up with the wrong image.
2. Avoid using images that have become Internet cliches. Search Google to see where else that cool, stock image appears. If it shows up more than just a few times, or if it shows up on other recruitment sites, don’t use it.
3. Before going live, invite in employees not involved in the image selection. Instead of asking them what they think of the picture, show it to them in context, and ask about the impression the entire project conveys.
4. Whenever you can, use real people. Have a photo day and engage your employees in shooting photos for the web site. Give them a photo credit online. Mount the best submissions and hang them where everyone can see.
5. Be ruthless in your selection and your photo editing. It may be a great picture, but if it isn’t consistent with your message, it doesn’t get used.
6. Change the imagery periodically. This is especially important to make sure the workers on your site are still your workers and haven’t moved on.
7. Candids are better than posed.

It’s also offering a $10,000 referral fee for new engineering hires through September 30. Bad news, though: I read the fine print and you can’t collect the cash if you’re a recruiter.

In addition to its engineering and marketing jobs open in San Francisco, Zoosk is hiring an HR manager, and like many companies, an employment branding director.

The San Francisco headcount has doubled in the last 15 months, to 95.

Athenahealth is a healthcare IT company, recently mentioned by Barron’s, that provides online services for doctors, such as billing services. It has received a number of honors like the 2011 “Best Place to Work in Massachusetts” by Boston Business Journal and was named to Fast Company’s list of the world’s most innovative companies in 2010.

While turnover is low, and Recruiting Operations Manager Susan Treadway says engagement is very, very high, athenahealth does have its recruiting challenges. Hiring for its critical sales and software jobs is challenging, competing without a big name against two that are quite big and have New England operations: Google and Microsoft.

Treadway’s department reports to an SVP and lies outside of the human resources department. Interestingly, it includes only six people, though it’s adding 400-450 people a year.

In 2009 in particular, it started to believe that its job board spending just wasn’t working well enough: too many applicants, not all qualified, a lot of sifting, too much recruiter time. Athena ultimately wanted not just to fill jobs but to improve hire quality and make sure its recruiting practices brought to athenahealth the innovative, fast-moving types who fit the culture.

It started using Indeed sponsorships at the end of 2009 and ended its contract with Monster in August 2010.

Athenahealth brought on HireClix, a recruitment marketing firm also in New England, in October 2010. HireClix immediately began refining the placement of Indeed ads. As an example, HireClix worked with Indeed to identify cities where salespeople would most likely to be living or traveling, such as Dallas, Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles, and placed ads in those search results, rather than in a region like “Northwest,” which wasn’t a common way for people to search. Treadway says she hadn’t previously fully understood the Indeed relationship — how to get the most out of the dollars she was spending.

This year, athenahealth has expanded its social media recruiting. Using Facebook and LinkedIn ads, HireClix targets passive candidates by geography, work history, and job title.

Athena and HireClix would, for example, look for people who had experience in the field of healthcare electronic records, and place an ad on their social media profiles. If a competitor was involved in a big layoff, HireClix would put a small ad on the LinkedIn profiles of employees of that company if they had a word like “PHP” or “gaming” in their profiles (the latter not because athenahealth’s a gaming company, but because that might reach the right type of person).

Gaming enthusiasts and software developers were also targeted through ads placed on websites such as G4TV.com and GSN.com.

In search of passive candidates in the sales/business development field, 50-60,000 were targeted through LinkedIn and Facebook ads that generated 3.2 million impressions, stats that cover a period of about five months. This led to 1,300 visits to the athenahealth careers site.

LinkedIn, it’s finding, has generally worked better for sales, Facebook for software developers.

Athenahealth and HireClix experiment heavily to see what ads, colors, phrasing, and so on work — and then scrap what doesn’t. They’re also using Google, both to place banner ads and to place text ads that show up when people conduct searches.

Treadway doesn’t see Twitter as a big part of her current recruitment advertising. Craigslist, and some niche job boards in the healthcare field, are used some, but Treadway doesn’t see niche board spending as something that’ll grow in the near future.

As for live events, Athenahealth also sponsored a mobile food truck at MIT, where it has had a long relationship. On May 18 of this year, it gave away free food during the breaks between exams during finals week. HireClix used Facebook ads — highly targeted to mention the specific classes people were taking — to get the word out to math and engineering students. The ads targeted 480 students; 191 saw them. Recruiters and software developers, of course, were on hand to schmooze with students.

More than 250-300 students came out in the rain, and the food sold out in three hours.

With all these changes in recruitment ad spending, Treadway is bombarded by excited recruiters wanting to place ads on this or that site, now that they see what’s working and what’s not. “You can throw out a big net in the ocean,” she says, “or you can get to the right fish by putting out the right bait.”

“But,” I asked, “how do you know these really are the right fish?” Right now, there aren’t a lot of metrics as to the quality of the candidates arriving at athenahealth and being hired. Treadway says she’s confident that the quality of candidates is up sharply, based on everything she hears from recruiters and employees (“people here are pumped about this kind of stuff,” she says, “not just the recruiters.”). The company’s moving from SonicRecruit — which was bought by Taleo — to Kenexa 2X BrassRing, which she says will give it a greater ability to generate the metrics and reports it needs to measure how various sources of hires are working out.

The culture at athenahealth is strong: it sees itself as offering disruptive technology, integral to the health care infrastructure of the future. All employees — called athenistas — are considered insiders, who hear quarterly results before Wall Street does. Everyone’s eligible for bonuses. “Transparency is big,” Treadway says. Though 360 reviews are given to everyone, “you better have said it already to them.”

She says the company is aggressive about moving to cutting-edge programs and technologies, even if it’s not sure of the exact outcome, and that this applies to both the company’s medical software as well as its recruiting. “We love taking on and trying new things,” she says, “but we don’t continue to do them if they don’t work.”

Spend your days driving a honkin’ dual-tandem, 700 hp eco-machine through the most beautiful city in the world.

This was the winning job posting for a creative job posting contest we recently ran. This one was for a bus driver for the city of Vancouver, Canada.

Keeping on the bus theme, most of us recall Jim Collins’ theme from his bestseller Good to Great: In fact, leaders of companies that go from good to great start not with “where” but with “who.” They start by getting the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats.

Which brings us to my rather superficial Magic Bus Theory of Recruiting. The quick summary goes something like this: imagine your bus is a big job posting with compelling titles, flashy neon lights, cool horn, and stuff like that. It’s a big bus with enough space for all types of people, although some routes would just be for sales folks, or engineers, or whatever. The idea is to get everyone to want to get on the bus and drive it. This is what good sourcing is all about. Good recruiting is about putting the person in the passenger seat as soon as the person gets on board, with some type of clever phrase like “would you be open to go for a drive if this job represented a true career move, even if it only offered a modest salary bump?” Most talented people will eagerly hop on board, at least to go for the drive.

Once on board you’re going to conduct a quick screen to see if the person qualifies to be on the bus and possesses the “Achiever Pattern.” This means the person is in the top half of the top half from a performance and quality of candidate standpoint. If so, you’re then going to describe a job that is slightly bigger than the person now holds. If the person shows interest in proceeding, ask about a major accomplishment most comparable to the job just described. The candidate will then begin to sell you as to why he or she is qualified. You’ve now successfully put the person in the back seat.

Of course, now you’ve got to figure out where to let the person off the bus, which gets to the real purpose of this article and why you must learn to train fleas. With this as the first stop in our bus ride, let me add some destination points.

One key point: from a talent strategy standpoint, and paraphrasing Collins’ “right people on the bus” concept, the idea is to first get the most talented people possible onto the right bus, but don’t let them off until you get them to the right stop. Unfortunately, most companies have predesigned bus routes and too many filters to even get the right people on the bus in the first place. Worse, it takes an act of god to change bus routes.

Second key point: to get great people onto the bus to begin with, you can’t use job descriptions. That’s why these must be banished as boarding passes. To take this idea one point further, I’m going to suggest that once you have the right person on the bus, create a job that offers the person a true career move, not a lateral transfer. In HR speak, write the job spec after you’ve found the person, not before. Here’s this same idea in more graphic terms: rather than try to fit a round peg (the person) into a square whole, modify the shape of the hole (the job requisition) to fit the round peg (the person). Now comes the hard part, since you’re already thinking this is not possible. That’s why you first need to understand the point about fleas.

Zig Ziglar used to tell a story about how fleas can be trained to jump lower (not a typo). Before any training, fleas can naturally jump 20″ or so high, unless you put them in a 5″ mason jar with a lid on top. After 20 minutes or so, the fleas get tired of bumping their heads on the top, and “learn” to jump only 4.9″. When you take the top off of the jar, none can get out, since getting out is beyond their perceived current ability. They’ve mentally put a limit on their jumping ability. The idea here is that many folks in HR and recruiting sometimes act like trained fleas, seeing only the restraints preventing them from implementing change, rather than the opportunity in doing so.

Of course, banishing skills-based job descriptions and writing the job spec after you’ve chosen the person raises legal compliance issues, impacts ATS and workflow design, affects recruitment advertising, requires better workforce planning, changes the role of the hiring manager, requires flexible budgeting, and even requires figuring out who should be driving the bus. Despite these challenges, the benefits are enormous compared to the issues to be overcome. As a minimum, you’ll hire more talented people; you’ll increase on-the-job performance, job satisfaction, and retention; your newfound job design flexibility will allow you to structure work to better meet the needs of a demographically changing workforce; and your hiring productivity will soar by eliminating all of the self-imposed bureaucratic inefficiencies.

Of course, to pull this off you’ll first need to recognize there’s no lid on the jar, except for the one you put there.