By John Sumser
I had a great conversation with Mark Willaman. He’s the Founder of Fisher-Vista (the parent of HRMarketer). We spent a long time discussing influence and the size and shape of the HR universe. As a marketer, Willaman has a sophisticated view of how the space operates. He’s been to most of the iterations of most of the industry trade shows. His HRMarketer product automates the process of managing a marketing budget and many of the routine tasks assoiciated with executing.
Mark reminded me not to forget the subdivisions within the Generalist leg. Providers of benefit and incentive programs, benefit analysts, people working to make health care available to employees are all a part of the grand scheme of the HR-Recruiting market.
In order to arrive at a final list of 100 Top Influencers, I’m going to interview 500 people in total. Each of the conversations takes at least an hour. It’s an interesting process that involves a lot of listening followed by reflection and analysis. I’m trying to leave my personal likes, dislikes and assumptions in the dust while figuring out how influence works in the HR-Recruiting space. I’d like the net result of this project to be a useful map for communications.
Along the way, I have had to reconsider my definitions of the industry. Each of the people I’ve interviewed so far has a unique view of what the industry is and who influences it. They are usually related. It’s a mosaic. Conversations with folks like Mark are making it increasingly clear that the HR-Recruiting market is composed of “spheres of influence”
There are two major subsets: the enterprise and the remainder of business. Each market has different price points, sales processes, recruiting needs, software integration needs and decision making structures. The Enterprise market features companies with more than 5,000 people at a plant.
Then, there are the “legs” of HR metioned last week. Each company is dominant in one of three areas: Generalist, Learning or Acquisition. While all of the functions and subfunctions of HR are performed in one way or another, each organization creates its own mix. As a result, the people who influence one company may have little or no sway in the company down the street.
The third component of the map is the make or buy decision. Every single aspect of HR, all three legs, can be done internally or outsourced. All of the outsourcing ecosystems are well established (and a generation ahead of the rest of the organization). The spectrum ranges from mom and pop recruiting shops to full scale HR Outsourcing firms with every imaginable size and shape of supplier inbetween.
An awful lot of attention is directed to the Vendors who supply software and software related services. Applicant Tracking Systems, job boards, payroll providers, training management, distance learning, enterprise suites and the Talent Management toolset often dominate the marketplace conversation. This is simply because of the size of their marketing budgets.
The final facet is industry. HR is exectuted differently in different industries. You don’t do the same things in a steel mill that you do at Google.
Each sphere of influence is shaped by the five attributes: organization size, HR aspect emphasis, internal-external, software and industry.
It shouldn’t be a surprise that our world is so complex. With 8 Million organizations purchasing HR-Recruiting Services and 2.5 Million firms with one or more HR-Recruiting professionals on the team, there’s no shortage of variation.
Influence is a combination of word of mouth, reputation, and relevance to the organization. Although innovation can be a significant contributor to the reputation of an influencer, it’s more important that they can solve standard problems in their niche. In the absence of substantial training programs and useful certification, influencers are the way that the industry figures out what to do. The strength of an influencer’s recommendation is often the way policy decisions are made.
On a day to day basis, no one is ever going to need a map of this depth. But, in order to trace out the rivers and streams of influence, it’s critical to know what s being influenced. It’s what’s inside the sphere.
John Sumser is the founder and CEO of TwoColorHat, a company specializing in market strategy for HR – Recruiting Vendors. You can keep up with his other stuff at johnsumser.com. Follow the rest of the Top 100 Influencers project.
