it's ALL about the experience

Lou Adler on "Employment Churn"

Here's an interesting theory and research undertaking being conducted by our friend and colleague, and today's guest author Lou Adler.  Read on.  I encourage you to take the two minutes to complete the survey -- I did!

As part of an ERE article coming out on August 7, 2009, I’m testing the idea of using job satisfaction to predict “employment churn” and the hiring recovery.

The idea here is that before there’s a general pickup in overall hiring, fully employed people will start switching seats with other currently employed people. This is referred to as employee churn. The downturn has reduced the level of normal employee turnover, creating pent-up for new jobs. This will cause a significant increase in voluntary turnover, once there’s even a glimmer of new opportunities becoming available.

So while the total employment picture won’t improve, corporate recruiting departments will become extremely busy filling these now open positions. This has happened in every previous recovery, so it’s important to get ready for this.   

To gain a sense of when this spike in turnover will occur, I’ve created a super-short job satisfaction survey. Here’s the link to this unusual Employment Satisfaction Survey. After you complete the survey, send the link to your Twitter followers and everyone in your LinkedIn network. This way the survey will have enough respondents to be a valid indictor of this pent-up demand for new jobs. The results will be posted on The Recruiter’s Wall blog. If you start tracking the results now, you’ll have a 30-60 day headstart on when you need to accelerate your recruiting efforts.   

As part of getting ready for this uptick, we’re hosting a TalentSeekr webinar on August 13^th.

This could possibly be the best new sourcing tool on the planet. According to early reports it’s an advanced version of a talent hub with dynamic Web 2.0 social media spokes. The dynamic feature comes about as the spokes automatically updates themselves based on which sourcing channel provides the best results. This is one webinar you won’t want to miss. It promises to be your first glimpse at Web 3.0 using every social media tool around. Better: it might solve your employee churn problem before it ever occurs. 

 

About Alise Cortez:  my day job is VP of Marketing & Sales at Improved Experience, where our mission is to capture the voice of experience one job search at a time for employees and empower employers with the metrics of engagement and retention.

 

Technorati tags:  employment churn, Lou Adler, recruiting, hiring.

Future of Talent Event in Dallas - a Recap

If you weren't in attendance at yesterday's Future of Talent event here in Dallas, presented by Kevin Wheeler and Susan Burns, you really missed something good!  Here's a highlight of just some of the gems I noted from Kevin's presentation on the general trends he's observed relative to the HR/Recruiting space. Consider this a copy of my notes, along with some of my musings.

Talent is the core:  Just as raw materials or capital was core in past decades for companies to grow and remain competitive, talent is the key ingredient for success today.  Kevin defines talent as the skills and competencies needed to achieve a business's objectives.  There's nothing earth-shattering about this observation -- but the juxtaposition of the past decades' reliance on materials and dollars--and not people--was what I found most notable.

Personalization:  Essentially, this is the idea that people want it their way, just like Burger King said 25 years ago ("Hold the pickle, hold the lettuce. Special orders don't upset us.  All we ask is that you let us have it your way!")  No one wants a canned product or service -- and job seekers don't want to suffer through a sterile process of getting hired.  Of course, my immediate thought was, "Whew, boy am I glad we discovered how to customize our suite of online survey products!"   We can customize all the demographics and drop-down selections, question content, and messaging as our clients wish.

Technology-driven:  No matter what generation we belong to, we must continue to find ways to integrate technology into our personal and professional lives. It's not going away, and the sooner we get comfortable with it and learn how to best harness its power, the more competitive we'll be as employers seeking the best talent. 

Generations:  There is a fight between Boomers and the Millennials to decide the landscape of the work environment in corporate America.  Gen X, which is the least able to get along with the other three generations and is sandwiched among the older and younger groups, has no say in this fight.  Also, Boomers base work on the number of hours put in, while the younger generations focus on working anytime, anywhere, and getting results (hence, you can see their disconnect when the Boomers demand they arrive by 8 am and stay at least until  6 pm.)  Furthermore, Boomers and the Millenials (also called Gen Y) can get along fairly well, which makes sense, oddly, since the former is the parent of the latter.  Millennials don't care about a career -- they want opportunities and the chance to learn new skills.  I found myself wondering what our friend and channel partner Gen InsYght and CEO Sherri Ellliott would have to say about this topic, as she has written a generations book called Ties to Tattoos.   

Mobility-Plus:  This trend highlights the notion that today's life and work take place, moving.  And thus, little is place-fixated anymore.  Therefore the age-old requirement that employees have to work in the office is antiquated and quickly being replaced with virtual work arrangements.  Especially among the Millennials, it's far more important to find ways to assess the performance and results of today's employees than to make sure you can see them on your worksite.

Transparency/openness:  Kevin stressed the "Facebook conundrum" and the gap between generations in their approaches to censor social media in the workplace, a stance he views as "stupid" since employees will look for other ways to connect with others with or without such censorship.  Susan added that it's important that employers trust their employees to be productive while enjoying such social media.  Jim Wahl from 7-Eleven spoke up and said that companies did need to take into account the additional technicalities involved in supporting such social media sites likes You Tube, since large companies like his with so many employees would ultimately have to add many more servers to handle the internet load associated with the video requirements.  My own mind went to our candidate experience product Get Better Hires and the number of times we'd seen candidates pen open-text comments to our client employers - saying how much they appreciated the employer's candor and transparency in allowing their opinion about the hiring experience to be heard.  I liked the idea that we are playing some kind of small role in facilitating transparency from employers to employees and job seekers.

Age of women: Two-thirds of degrees are currently earned by women.  And further, women are not the ones being laid off right now.  Today's jobs require collaboration, right brain thinking, creativity -- all skills or traits generally associated with women and lacking in men.  There is massive male unemployment and that's very disturbing to Kevin.  Think about it, he says, what's associated with an idle male?  Alcoholism, crime, and even revolution.  Kevin said he could think of a few revolutions that have occurred in history when similar conditions were present -- Hitler's rise to power came to mind.  Interesting food for thought, indeed.

Rise of the Creative Class:  This highly recommended book talks about a coveted group of people that includes scientists, engineers, artists, and Bohemenians -- folks that share a meta competency called an analytical/creative combination -- the critical competency that helps generate wealth today.  And these people have chosen to live at the various edges of America in major cities.  This leaves the huge chunk of land in the center of the nation with the vast numbers of unemployed or unemployable people over 40 years of age.  What to do with that part of the country and that group of people? 

Age of Collaboration and Community:  Nothing shocking here.  Social media (various tools like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) are important ways people practice social networking. And this connection should be encouraged and fostered within companies and among recruiting and retention efforts.

Growing a Culture of Sustainability:  This is relative to both work and lifestyle -- how do we nurture growth that is not explosive and what's that look like to a shareholder?  Today, we binge and purge on people in hiring.  Europe can't fire so easily so they hire more slowly and carefully.  Binging and purging has characterized the last 30 years in the US, and it has helped to create a very negative environment among employers and employees alike.  Instead, companies should be looking for ways to reflect shareholder value in smaller, more sustainable increments of growth and profit, an idea which relates nicely to the next noted trend.

Retrain - Redeploy - Refresh:  Instead of constantly hiring and firing new employees for specific talent, companies and shareholders need to be willing to essentially "recycle" their talent -- like IBM did.  They hired carefully for broad-based skills and long-term cultural fit, and then internally promoted their employees, many of whom stayed for a good 30 years.  We need to go back to this model, on a smaller scale and in a different way, as appropriate for each business.  While it would be best if our public school system could teach more broad-based skill sets that include a heavy dose of creativity and flexibility in their curriculum, alas, the responsibility of instilling the development of a broad-based skill set that ultimately can be retrained, deployed, and refreshed will ultimately fall on corporate shoulders.  Our own school system in Texas is focused on TAKS (Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills) and encourages kids to memorize the one answer for this one question with no room for the assessment of creative thinking.  Kevin said an interesting trend is emerging relative to the school effort, though:  20% of kids in our country are being home-schooled (and there is room for creativity and flexibility just given the sheer difference in approach from parent to parent).  Magnet schools are better are encouraging creative development, but there aren't enough of them to really impact the numbers needed for "stickiness."  Our public school system structure was established in the late 1800s and has little changed since then.  <Heavy sigh> We have a lot of work to do to adapt ourselves to the ever-changing demands of 21st century life.

Rise of Entrepreneurship:  Daniel Pink has been saying this for quite some time and given the popularity of his book Free Agent Nation - the Future of Working for Yourself, I think Kevin's spot-on right.  There is little interest in or availability of a long-term career with any one company -- better to develop a set of skills in demand and offer them for sale as the market dictates.  Further, Kevin noted the multiple streams of income the Millennials especially seem to want and are able to create -- all of which relate to the sustainability link.  For example, Kevin said his 26-year old son banks all the earnings he makes at his full-time job and then lives on the earnings he makes from the sale of items on E-Bay.  Very entrepreneurial and multi-streamed indeed.

Gen Y values go mainstream:  Gen Y, or Millennials, value optimism, entrepreneurialism, technology, and flexibility.  And oddly, these are the elements fueling workplace trends and success. 

From constraint to choice:  Again, no surprise here -- people want to have choice in almost everything.  However, the abundance of choice can be extremely overwhelming and produce fear and angst about what choices to make for oneself.  I think about the sheer number of careers or kinds of work we can have, not just once but perhaps change it seven times over in our life, and it is indeed crazy-making.  Our ability to paint our lives today includes the choice of kind of work we do, living location, whether or not to marry or have children, and even what gender we'd like to be.  Incredible. 

Re-forming the organization:  Kevin believes the future calls for companies to have a small group of very loyal employees who will form the basis of the company, and then be flanked by a ring of contractors and consultants who will complement their talent.  Interesting idea -- so, much smaller employee-base size, but a lot of contingent workforce. 

Don't you wish you had attended?  Mind you, these are my notes and according ideas. For the full story and "nothing lost in translation" version, you'll just have to attend a Future of Talent presentation yourself. 

About Alise Cortez:  my day job is VP of Marketing & Sales at Improved Experience, where our mission is to capture the voice of experience one job search at a time for employees and empower employers with the metrics of engagement and retention. 

Technorati tags:  Future of Talent, Kevin Wheeler, Susan Burns, HR trends.

 

A Casual Conversation with David Lee

At ERE's last conference in San Diego, Alise met David Lee, principal of Human Nature at Work which specializes in helping companies better motivate and engage their workforce.  David asked a few interesting questions.... here they are, along with Alise's responses. 

 

David:  You said something that I thought was very quote worthy in our conversation regarding some employers are afraid to find out what their employees are thinking because "what if we can't do anything about it" or other fears. I'd love to have you riff on that.

Alise:  I applaud all our clients who have actually applied financial resources and socio-emotional wherewithal to collect feedback from job seekers, employees, hiring managers, and interviewers about the quality and effectiveness of the hiring process.  In my view, those who are willing to solicit and listen to feedback are serious about improving their processes and bottom-line financial results. But the fact of the matter is that while it’s lovely to hear flattering feedback, it can be very uncomfortable to hear where we fall short in providing an enticing or even acceptable experience for job seekers. 

A couple years ago, I was in conversation with a large telecommunications company about the prospect of integrating candidate experience feedback to their metrics efforts.  I described how the feedback would be collected via an email solicitation and subsequent online feedback portal and how the results would allow the company to measure and improve overall recruitment performance, employer brand, targeted and diversity outreach efforts, and early employee engagement.  The gentleman with whom I was speaking listened intently and then responded, “We have a fair number of people who come through our recruitment process who are not happy with us, either because they didn’t get an interview or the job.  It doesn’t make sense to me that we would want to ‘prick the boil’ and ask them to tell us what they specifically liked or didn’t like about their experience with us.” 

Now, in my view, I think the company is seriously missing the point, to their own detriment.  In their case, the recruiting executive not only didn’t want to hear what the candidates had to say, he was concerned that inviting their feedback would only worsen their opinion of the company.  Our own experience of soliciting feedback, even from disgruntled job seekers, is that contrary to pricking the boil, we constantly see open-text comments from candidates indicating their appreciation that the company even solicited their feedback, that they found it refreshing that the company was interested in what they had to say about their experience, and that in being able to provide feedback it felt to the job seekers a little less like they had fallen into the proverbial “black hole.”  What a concept --  somebody was listening!  And further, early research and development research conducted prior to developing our candidate experience product told us that 53 percent of the 500 job seekers we surveyed said they would think more highly of a company if they asked their opinion, even if they didn’t get the job. 

Contrast this apathetic view with an organization that perhaps has a more serious problem.  Whereas the telecommunications company I’ve been talking about probably had the ability to conduct the candidate experience survey and respond to the results (if they were so inclined), another company I spoke with had neither option.  Chatting with a small software development company about our various enterprise feedback management products, the Recruiting Manager said dismally, “Oh, it all sounds amazing.  Really amazing.  But even if I did have the ability to spend money on surveys, we in Recruiting are powerless to do anything about the results. We have no budget, and whatever we did learn about how to improve our recruitment process would fall on deaf ears because our company executives don’t think we have to compete for talent.  They don’t understand that job seekers have a choice of where to work, even in this market, and that if we provide them a crumby recruiting experience they won’t want to work for our company.”  I thought to myself, “Humm, maybe it’s time for this poor woman to find a new employer!”  And not only will their candidates not want to work for the company, they will surely tell their friends and colleagues about the poor experience they had, which will ultimately further diminish this company’s prospects to hire in that community.

David:  Examples of clients (anonymous is fine) who discovered areas that could be improved upon, that they had no idea were issues.

Alise:  I’ll give examples from two different clients.  In order to understand the context of  the examples, let me say that our candidate experience product (Get Better Hires) collects self-reported demographic information from job seekers and feedback about four specific experiences a job seeker has with any one company:  applying for a job on the company’s career website, interviewing on site with hiring managers and other interviewers, receiving a formal offer containing pay and benefits information – whether or not it is accepted, and the experience of being on the job 90 days post hire.  In the case of one of our customers, a small healthcare organization in the Pacific Northwest, the interview part of the hiring process is completely handled by the hiring managers – the recruiting team does not get involved to schedule or release the results from the interviews.  It was a complete surprise to the recruiting director that of the four stages we score for satisfaction, the interview part received by far the lowest satisfaction scores among the four stages across all categories we survey.  With this data, she then had data to make a business case for change – either help the hiring managers improve the interview part of the process they owned or allow Recruiting to take it over and manage. 

Another example comes from a pharmaceutical company in the Northeast.  In their case, they knew at the outset of activating their candidate experience survey subscription that their selection and hiring process resulted in mainly a Caucasian male middle-aged workforce.  What they were surprised to learn in their results was that African Americans and Hispanics were quite pleased with the process, employer brand, and competitive differentiation and that they could leverage that satisfaction to hire a more diverse workforce.  Prior to this understanding, they just incorrectly assumed that their message was only attractive to white males.  Armed with new information, they came to understand their selection and hiring process somehow favored white males, a powerful realization to understand and ultimately change their workforce diversity dynamic.

David:  Other points you would like to make and examples of why it's important to tap into the "voice of the customer” (employee in this case).

Alise:  Two thoughts, both examples from two different customers, come to mind.  First, in early conversations with a healthcare organization in the Midwest, the Recruiting Director understood the power of leveraging candidate feedback and how opening a dialogue with job seekers would help her measure and improve her recruitment process, employer brand, and competitive differentiation.  What I was surprised to hear her say is, “You know, it occurs to me that even if I never do a thing with the feedback I get – I never implement any changes to improve our processes, the mere act of simply asking our candidates for their feedback puts us ahead of our competition. We’re showing them that we listen to them and care what they think.”  The second example from the healthcare organization in the Pacific Northwest I mentioned earlier comes from an open-text (qualitative) comment penned by one of their recent survey takers, as follows:  “(Organization Name) is known for its training and development of employees. The fact that even the application/recruiting process is being analyzed is telling - and impressive.”  The reason this comment is worth repeating is that when job seekers see how serious a company takes the quality of their recruitment process, employer brand, and competitive differentiation, the higher quality candidates they tend to attract and the more the quality candidates want to work for them.  And that’s a win/win every company strives for.

 

 

About Alise Cortez:  my day job is VP of Marketing & Sales at Improved Experience, where our mission is to capture the voice of experience one job search at a time for employees and empower employers with the metrics of engagement and retention. 

 

Technorati tags:  enterprise feedback,  survey.

 

Ya goin' to ERE in San Diego?

We're in the planning stages of making ready for our annual trek to the ERE conference in San Diego this Spring.  I was wondering who all we might find in attendance -- reply to this post and let us know if you plan to be there.

Just for starters in consideration for registering, there's this year's conference chair, Michael McNeal, VP of Talent Strategy and Acquisition for Intuit.  Who remembers hearing Michael speak at ERE Spring 2007 when he as the "Morning Guy" giving the presentation publicly chastised "Night Guy," his alter ego who had apparently made the former stay up way too late the night before consuming innumerable margaritas?!  Michael has a wealth of knowledge to share, and he's just an all-around good guy, too.  Some of my favorite speakers who will also be espousing their knowledge are Lou Adler, Aziz Chowdhury, Ben Gotkin, Cathy Henesey, Rodney Moses, Dr. John Sullivan, Kevin Wheeler, and Jeremy Eskenazi.  Can't miss 'em!

At our last ERE conference in Fall 2008, we had our usual blast!  We exhibited our booth for the first time.  And we made fast work of the all important socializing in the evening -- see the pictures of several of us dancing on the tables at Opa Taverna.  I mean, come on!    And hey, you know these photos really were snapped at ERE because I'm wearing my conference badge (what a dweeb!).  See you in San Diego next!

About Alise Cortez:  my day job is VP of Marketing & Sales at Improved Experience, where our mission is to capture the voice of experience one job search at a time for employees and empower employers with the metrics of engagement and retention. 

The Twilight Zone

Well, it's the start of a brand New Year, and Michael Maynard is back with yet another interesting and entertaining perspective, this time about the relevance of an old TV show and the current political fanfare. 

 

One of the guilty pleasures of the holiday season is to watch episodes of the original "The Twilight Zone."  It has been 50 years since the TV show was first broadcast (1959 - 1964).  The shows were in black and white -- I find the black and white makes the episodes more scary and ominous.  The backdrops and acting are frequently over the top and cheesy, but they just add to the overall suspense.  Writer and Producer Rod Serling's introductions were intense, melodramatic and pithy.  I was five-years-old at the time -- I was allowed to stay up late on Friday nights to watch the scarefest.  I became so scared that I couldn't sleep, but my fears weren't so consuming to prevent me from watching the Friday Night Fights and Make That Spare professional bowling show.

There were recurring fear-creating themes in the 156 episodes that were indicative of the time:  explosion of the atomic bomb, unknowns of outer space and replacement of humans by machines. An astrophysicist and a priest have discovered a long-dead world that has been emitting a signal for centuries, the town that agreed to a "cultural exchange" program with space aliens, and the girl who trades in her parents for new, mechanical ones.  Some of the shows involved timeless themes, such as the horrors of war, during the time of the  United States' increasing involvement in the Vietnam War.  One episode involved a National Guard tank crew seeing strange things while on war game maneuvers near the Little Bighorn battleground.

But there were more subtle continuing themes, such as the continued erosion of civilized culture.  A bibliophile bank teller has all the time he wants to read the classics in the post atom bomb world; a man's old radio plays programs from the past that only he can hear; a mediocre saxophone player becomes the best musician ever but can only play to an audience of one, himself.  Serling tried to show that the losses of culture to time, disinterest or machines causes the citizens of the world to be continually pulled farther apart, with little hope to be together again.

The similarities between the youthful, mediagenic President and First Family of that time to the President-in-Waiting and his family have been reported many times. There are lessons to be learned from the tragically short life and time in office of John Fitzgerald Kennedy as President that Barack Obama, or any newly appointed leader, should consider:

What's the mood?  Kennedy intuitively understood that the Russian successful launch of Sputnik had made the populace fearful about the future. The US allies were concerned about America's losing political and military standing throughout the world. What was needed were new and different programs that would restore the national and international confidence. The race to the moon and the creation of the Peace Corps were bold, decisive and needed re-engagement programs.

Use the power of symbolism - The symbolism of the New Frontier made the Peace Corp and moon exploration programs seem possible, even though both were untested to the scale of previous similar efforts. The United States was going to lead the world towards the New Frontiers of space and peaceful internationalism.

Admit your mistakes and cut your losses - Being talked into undertaking the Bay of Pigs by the urging of the rich, politically supportive Cuban expatriates was dumb, undertaking the Bay of Pigs without the needed planning was dumber.  While it was personally and politically difficult to pull out, it was the right decision.  Other than major military escalation, there was no possible win scenarios and the downside of this approach was potential nuclear war.

Don't flinch under pressure - The television drama, "The Guns of August," showed the pressures on the young and inexperienced president.  One wrong signal or misstep could potentially lead to the destruction of the world, a potential scenario that even the previous Presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman did not face.  Not only did Kennedy not flinch, but he also understood the USSR leader, Nikita Khruschev, faced similar personal and political demise as he did. That apparently small realization was integral to the Guns of August resolution.  Not only did Kennedy not flinch, but his actions were correctly interpreted by Khruschev as allowing both of them joint political face saving scenarios. What Kennedy did and did not do was extraordinary for any leader, not just an inexperienced one.

Who do you trust? John Kennedy had his team of the "best and brightest" Dean Rusk, Robert McNamara, McGeorge Bundy, and others, but his relationship with them was problematic due their being out of the loop in the decision to undertake the Bay of Pigs.  The options that were presented by these advisors were the traditional ones: use diplomacy, challenge the Soviet armada, find a Soviet proxy similar in importance as Cuba was to the US.  Kennedy turned to the person who knew him best, his brother Bobby, who would both emotionally support and mentally challenge him as the best advisors do during crisis.  It was unlikely that Rusk, McNamara, et al, would have come up with the naval blockade idea, but gaining their support of the blockade so that they would do their jobs accordingly was imperative.

Think outside the box - After obtaining the spy satellite pictures showing the Soviets building Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles silos in Cuba, all of the traditional responses to the threat may have led to an atomic war.  One conventional option, do nothing, would amount to appeasement and signal tacit acknowledgement to the Kremlin that the new, young United States leader could be bullied into submission.  Another conventional option, take out the missile silos by air was problematic because of the defensive anti-ballistic missiles used by the Kremlin to shoot down the planes would demonstrate the potential technological military power of the USSR to the world. The third conventional option, invasion of Cuba, would likely lead to World War III.  The unconventional option, use a naval blockade around Cuba, took the Russian leadership by surprise, and made them reconsider their estimate of the young President.

About Michael Maynard:  Michael is a free-lance journalist and management consultant.  As a freelance writer he has written for CEO and CIO magazines and other magazine and newspapers.  He was managing editor and featured columnist for Global Business Newsletter.  He was also a featured columnist for the Washington Post-Newsweek syndicate.  For more than 25 years, Michael has been President and Co-Founder of Azimuth Partners, a marketing and business development consultancy.  Michael is currently lending his consultant talents to Improved Experience, which helps employers use feedback to measure and manage competitive advantage, engagement, and retention. You can reach him at michael@improvedexperience.com.

 

Technorati tags:  John F Kennedy, Barak Obama, political lessons.