Digging Into RecruitingBlogs.com v2.05

Unsung Hero Sings

(Jan.30, 2009) Amitai Givertz, Mr. Recruitomatic, works tirelessly to aerate the featured content on RBC. Ami, as he is known to his friends, compiles the daily feature articles and his exhaustive “best of the week” collections. His blog here on RBC is an inventory of the great posts that top the site each day.

Ami is widely known for content density (he’s really smart), link mania (his stuff is heavily annotated with really useful pointers). a dry, self-deprecating sense of humor (bless Mother for that), limitless intensity (at last count, seven observable blogs), passion and dogged persistence. He has been in and around the recruiting industry since before the first sailor was shanghaied. He recently won the Recruiting Animal’s 2008 award for Recruitosphere Excellence. It sits on his trophy shelf alongside his Mikey’s Monkey Award from 2006.

These days, Ami is turning the world upside down with his humbly named Brown Bag Recruiter program. The innocuously titled webinars are the gateway to Recruiting mastery. Like a bottle of Absinthe, the seminars are deliciously mind expanding. Ami has discovered an enormous cache of riches and is busily trying to give them away to any recruiter who wants them.

Ami’s webinars show you how to crack the code. Using Google accounts and Google toolkits, the programs teach recruiters to construct astonishingly rich and complex resume databases. Rather than focusing on hitting a home run like some search seminars, Ami teaches the virtue of looking ahead. Building an arsenal of data that can be reused and renewed is the ultimate object of the class.

Here’s the upcoming schedule. You’ll be glad you made the investment. Each webinar is $45 and lasts a generous hour. The entire series price is $95

* Wednesday, February 4, 2pm EST G-Recruiting: A 60-minute Digest (Register)
* Tuesday, February 10 2PM EST Search Engine Secrets, Part 1: Customized Candidate Search (Register)
* Wednesday, February 11 2PM EST Search Engine Secrets, Part 2: Vertical Search and Sourcing to Profile (Register)
* Thursday, February 12 2pm ESTSearch Engine Secrets, Part 3: Purposeful Sourcing to Drive Meaningful Relationships (Register)
* Tuesday, February 17 2pm EST Search Engine Secrets: A 60-minute Digest (Register)
* Thursday, February 19 2pm EST Search Engine Secrets: A 60-minute Digest (Register)

The Sourcing Hierarchy: Rational Recruiting Expenditure

As budgets tighten, companies are beginning to wrestle with standard cost-effectiveness questions. Advertising and advertising-like functions are one of the first places that budget shaving takes root. Since much of Recruiting and Talent acquisition uses an advertising business model (upfront expense, limited quantification of returns), the cost cutter’s eyes are inevitably drawn towards expenses in our operations. 

The partial truth is that “I know I waste 50% of my advertising spend. I just don’t know which 50%”.  Sadly, that sort of 20th Century thinking doesn’t fly well in the face of performance monitoring advertising like Google’s Adsense. So, Recruiting leaders are facing and asdking key questions about the value they receive.

There are many ways of finding, attracting and hiring candidates. None of them work perfectly well. All of them are better at some things than others. What works and doesn’t work is industry, region and company specific.

There is almost no company of any significant complexity (say, over 100 people) that can proceduralize a Recruiting approach across all of the positions that have to be filled. You simply can’t find a CFO the way that you find a technical writer. You can’t find Software design Engineers in Cleveland the same way that you do in Silicon Valley or Seattle. You can’t fill auto industry slots in the South the way that you do in Detroit.

There is no one way that is best.

Instead, each job class in each region in each industry has a set of approaches that are optimal today. Not for always. Just for now. Approaches with longer time horizons tend to have better ROIs. That may not matter if the position is time-critical.

Here are the ways that you can find, attract or develop talent pools. They are organized from cheapest and fastest to slowest and most expensive. The first four, Employment Branding, Talent Pool Development, Employment Site and Job Specific Microsite are the cheapest and fastest after the initial investment in time and money are complete. (If you think I missed something or think the order is wrong, please let me know)

• Employment Branding
• Talent Pool Development
• Company Employment Web Site
• Job Specific Microsite
• Internal HR Databases
• ATS Databases
• Referral Programs
• Proactive Internet Sourcing
• Phone Sourcing
• Free Job Boards
• Major Job Boards
• Specialty Job Boards
• Company SEO/SEM
• Job Specific SEO/SEM
• Temporary Help
• Long Term Contract
• Contingency Placement
• Specialty Search Firm
• Boutique Executive Search Firm

The idea of a sourcing hierarchy is simple. For every class of openings ina company, there is an optimal place to start in the hierarchy. For example, you probably won’t find a CEO in using the first seventeen approaches. That measn that when you are filling the C-level slot, you should jump down the hierarchy to Boutique search Firms.

Similarly, great low level professionals are easily identified and processed using tools that are much faster and cheaper than a retained executive search firm.

It’s the sort of common sense that’s hard to see when you are in the middle of a reactive process.

Recruiting Strategy is the essential element in cost control and containment. As long as Recruiting remains a reactive sport, costs will be controlled by circumstances. A well thought out Recruiting Strategy will provide guidance for where to start on the list for each job class that will be filled. A well defined data collection process will help refine the decision with experience.

081110 Newspapers Grasp For Relevancy

Newspapers Grasp For Relevancy

(Nov 10, 2008) I happened on Alan D. Mutter’s piece “It’s time to rip the lid off” as I scavenged the web this morning. Mutter, a long time old school media guy had some good luck building companies and now muses about media while working at Tapit Partners. (I don’t think they are related to the Tappet Brothers.)

Mutter’s theory is that the huge sales of “Obama Wins” newspapers (purchased for memorabilia purposes) prove that there is breath left in the corpse. All it really takes, he opines, is a return to real muck-raking journalism. The fight for social justice, as executed by investigative journalists, is the key to a vibrant future for the dinosaurs.

“All but the most aggressively down-sized paper can generate excitement on a day-to-day basis by practing (sic) the sort of muscular, crusading journalism that afflicts the comfortable and comforts the afflicted by kicking over rocks, exposing social injustice and holding public officials and corporate leaders to account.”

In military circles, this is known as fighting the last war.

Most of the people who claim to know what’s best for the dying big-media news industry point to the heroic days when news wasn’t “infotainment”. The concurrence of populist alignment and revenue decline is typically mistaken as causal. The hidden argument is that the competition between news sources for attention resulted in a quality decline which drove circulation losses.

You’ve got to wonder if this guy has ever really watched Jon Stewart.

Old media, newspapers in particular really do have an important place in the new media ecosystem, On that point, we are in agreement. Representative digging, the hard work and fun stuff of journalism, is a long way away from the right direction, however.

Newspapers can be the economic centerpieces of the regions in which they operate. For a period of time, this idea was central to the way that the Washington Post approached its web transition. The newspaper can be the platform on which much is built.

You just can’t get there when the audience is the source of your misery. “Circulation declines” means that the current material is not competitive with the alternatives. While industry analysts can and should characterize the problem in these objective sounding terms, the truth is that this is a “failure to connect”. Where “circulation decline” lays the blame on the audience (and outside of the industry ), “failure to connect” is responsible ownership of the problem.

When classified advertising is the centerpiece of the newspaper’s economic strategy, things are different. If the object of the operation is to energize enough buyers and sellers so that they interact effectively with each other, the business model stands a chance. If the gambit is “be really smart” and hope that it’s enough (which is what you do when you focus on journalism), it’s a long shot.

Way before there was investigative journalism, there was people talking to each other through the medium of their town’s newspaper. Political advocacy and moral posturing are the luxuries of successful businesses, not the plans of startups. The approach Mutter suggests is like saying that the way to reclaim the family fortune is by rejoining the hoity-toity country club.

(interestingly, Steve Outing reacted to the same piece, same quote and delivered a different view)

080924 Great Job Board 2

(Sep 24, 2008) When I talk to my kids about finding a job, I tell them to avoid using job boards. While job boards can be helpful in a job hunt, it’s easy to fall prey to the belief that they are the only thing you need to do. Being busy doesn’t mean that you’re productive. Looking through job listings and sending resumes is not the same as finding a job.

Finding a really good job requires you to know what you want. That means doing some very hard work and self-assessment. Research into the market and research into yourself are the first steps in a really successful career.

Jobs are transitory steps in a larger context.

When the online job board industry was in its formative stages, the newspapers did a lot of studying. One of the interesting discoveries of that early work was that classified ads have different value to different constituents. HR Departments and Recruiters believed that a significant percentage of their jobs were filled from classified ads. Job hunters, on the other hand, had the opposite belief.

Both things are true. Classified ads (job boards) work for Recruiters. They don’t really work very well for job hunters. If they worked for candidates, we’d be buried in testimonials. Can you recall ever seeing a candidate testimonial?

As a result, money pours into the employer side while the candidate side remains weak.

Craigslist is an interesting case. Since Craigslist insists on direct communication (without resorting to a database or a filter) between buyer and seller, candidates do find work. The anecdotal information is that both sides of the transaction find similar value in the simple Craigslist approach.

Candidates are generally better understood as lifetime customers while employers are transactional. For professional niches, this means that more career information is a good thing. Professional associations are uniquely suited to deliver real value to both sides.

In the long haul, job boards are businesses, not philanthropies. There will always be a strong drift towards the cash (employers) even though the inventory (candidates) are the source of any real wealth.

The Merger of Arbita and Job Machine

If you haven’t noticed, Arbita, the Minneapolis based Internet Recruitment Advertising agency, is undergoing a market changing transformation. Once the mouse that roared ( a Peter Sellers comedy about a small nation that declares war on the US and wins, improbably), Arbita has been polishing its credentials quietly over the past couple of years. The little engine that could has become a major force in the industry. Relentless travel and deal making by the firm’s charismatic CEO are at the heart of the game.

Today’s announcement that Arbita has merged with Job Machine underscores the radical thinking that is at the core of this juggernaut. Besides finding a long lost brother, the pairing provides a game changing level of synergy. All of a sudden, one neutral and objective firm is providing a full spectrum of sourcing services. From Training for desktop sourcing to tightly orchestrated Recruitment Branding campigns, the newly minted service does it all.

Instead of an Advertising agency trying to navigate emerging tools and services, Arbita is primarily a software company that happens to be good at meeting client needs online. Shally Steckerl’s JobMachine, another entity founded on sheer optimism and the moral high road, offers industry changing tactics for workforce development, candidate pipeline acquisition, raw sourcing technique and polished social networking tactics.

Together, the two offer breadth in strategy, ease of implementation (from core software), and full choice in tactics (the complete range of sourcing alternatives).

Look closely at this transaction, it heralds a new day.

080523 Daily Links

• Arbita And Job Machine Merge Redefining the sourcing process, Arbita and JobMAchine align to form the first 21st Century Advertising Agency. (Press Release)
• Smart and funny use of Google Adwords I love the male enhancement ads that occasionally appear on Cheezhead and other HR related blogs. Here are some examples of ads that were either intentionally or accidentally funny.
• In the long term, it’s in everyone’s best interests for data to be as portable as possible. For users, data portability means that we can invest time and resources into new platforms on the web without the fear that the work we create will be locked in to that network or otherwise lost to us. It also offers the possibility that we can take our compiled work in one place and let another service process that data to create new kinds of value for our benefit. from Toward a Value Added User Economy
• Digging Into Recruitingblogs.com v1.6 This edition features a look the the Recruitingblogs.com Forum
• Don Ramer, Shally Steckerl and Jason Davis. Today on Blog Talk Radio at 1230 EST Talkin about a revolution

ATS.3 (Applicant Tracking Systems)

There are seven essential, interrelated components of an Applicant Tracking System. (You might take a look at this great little piece …Animals are Tracked, People have relationships.) The actual functionality is very simple and can all be generated from a single database.

The basic components are:

1. Candidate Database (Resume and Relationship Information) This may need to be two separate databases to meet regulatory requirements
2. Jobs Database
3. Publication Services (for Managing the Talent Pools)
4. Workflow Management (Routing and Scheduling)
5. Searching and Matching Technology
6. Embedded Wisdom (Help, Templates for Letters and Newsletters)
7. Workspace Integration Services

Rather than cover a lot of old ground, please take a look at this series:

• ATS Market Basics
• ATS Market Basics II
• ATS Market Basics III
• ATS Market Basics IV
• ATS Market Basics V
• ATS Marke Basics VI
• ATS Market Basics VII
• ATS Marke Basics VIII
• ATS Market Basics IX
• ATS Market Basics X
• ATS Market Basics XI
• ATS Market Basics XII
• ATS Market Basics XIII

080519 Daily Links

• Hit the Road, Jacque Ami sharpens the “Bringing Physical Community to Online Networks” point
• Are Pro Bloggers Going Extinct Soon? Bloggers are going have to work harder on making their blogs more of a destination.
• Despite My Best Intentions, I Just Can’t Stop… Compulsive news-media basher Toby Dayton can’t get over just how lost the newspapers are.
• Marketing To Millennials “we’re going to facilitate an ongoing conversation that will engage you far longer and more intimately than a 30-second television commercial”. Sounds like they understand the value of the Recruiting Roadshow.
• ATS Systems Don’t Add Value “Recruiting is all about relationships and most ATS (Animal Tracking System to me – animals are tracked, you have relationships with people), as they are designed and come out of the box, are inherently flawed when it comes to actually adding value to great recruiting.”

ATS.2 (Applicant Tracking Systems)

The response to the first couple of articles in this series is interesting. Significantly, a number of credible market leaders think that the game is locked. Companies (vendors) who enter the Recruiting Software market will end up having to deliver ATS functionality if they want to stay in the game. Companies (customers) know how to buy job ads, ATS products and screening and assessment tools. So, that’s what they buy.

The hundred or so ATS vendors are stuck within the limits of customer purchasing policies and protocols..

The rush to Talent Management Systems, aggressively championed by the analyst community, doesn’t seem to have caught fire just yet. Lots of buzz but few sales.

Another group suggests that buyers segregate along three lines: Value, Early Adopter and Functional. The Early Adopters and Functional buyers focus on performance while the Value buyer concentrates on cost savings. HR buyers are prototypically Value Buyers. Innovation and the political risk associated with embarrassment are not for them. For this group, innovation seems to enter the marketplace through its most entrepreneurial windows (the staffing industry)

Meanwhile, the candidates are changing their game. In the Western world, anyone looking for a job uses the internet as a part of their search. Companies get Googled and "background checked" as a matter of course. Word of mouth is more important in employment branding than any other factor. Branding, referral programs, social networks, avatar based VR, new sourcing and optimized utilization of the 50,000 job boards are simply not a part of the standard ATS configuration.

There are, therefore, two ways to think about the role of the Applicant Tracking System.

• It is the platform for all Human Capital Management systems because it is the first place that data about an employee hits the organization,
  or
• It is a buffer between the organization and the outside world where legal defensibility is established.

It is either a platform or a buffer.

Cleveland.1

The greatest paradox of the Internet era is the way that global communications tighten regional dynamics. Simultaneously, the world is flatter  and more intensely local. Somehow, greater access to planetary insight makes the neighborhood really important.

You’d think that globalized communications would homogenize culture. Alongside McDonalds, Starbucks, Wal-Mart, Holiday Inn and the other giants of broadcast economy, the internet appears to regiment. Reduced friction implies limited choice, doesn’t it?

Concerns over cultural standardization are at the heart of anti-corporate sentiment in Europe and South America. Generic storefronts and choice limitations appear to be a dynamic that should spread beyond the enterprises built on them. From one perspective, American culture looks like these missionary outposts.

At the same time, regional differences between American cities are as significant as the things that make countries different elsewhere. Industry, history, geography, growth, living standard, ethnic mix, religion, manners and educational infrastructure make a distinct stew in each of the locales. Local culture appears to trump standardized infrastructure.

Today, it’s Ohio. The Cleveland Recruiting Roadshow is tomorrow morning. Cleveland is as different from Boston, Atlanta, San Francisco or Seattle as those cities are from each other.

Tomorrow….Core Characteristics of the city.