By Gerry Crispin, SPHR and Mark Mehler
mmc@careerxroads.com
Since 1996 our CareerXroads Update has been a monthly public commentary on the staffing industry. As we kick off our 12th year, we’ve added a second members-only publication: “CareerXroads Colloquium Bellwether” to highlight short news items that we find of interest. If you’d like to learn more about the Bellwether and our Colloquium click here. We welcome hearing from you at 732-821-6652 or mmc@careerXroads.com with ideas and queries.
When Smith Takes Wesson to Work
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From SHRM’s recent HR Issues.
A workplace weapons bill was passed by
the Oklahoma legislature in 2004 (and amended in 2005). It prohibits employers
from establishing policies banning employees from bringing weapons onto company
property. Similar laws passed in Kentucky, Alaska, Minnesota, and most recently
in Kansas.
Just think about it. When you are telling that employee who bids on every new opening about how he came in second - yet again - he may very well have his favorite 6-shooter right by his side. In that situation we would love to have the guy that first thought up this idiotic legislation by our side - sweating over which one of us gets to him first. Fortunately some of our membership dues to SHRM recently paid off when a long-awaited decision from a federal judge of the U.S. District Court in Oklahoma sided with SHRM in finding that the workplace weapons bill is pre-empted by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Act’s (OSHA) ’general duty’ clause.
SHRM had filed a "friend of the court" brief in this Oklahoma case, known officially as ConocoPhillips v. Henry, et al. SHRM’s position throughout is that individual employers should have the freedom to decide what policies best fit their work establishments.
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Gerry’s Rant on Competenices: Still Looking for the Manhattan Project
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The dictionary definition of a competency is "the ability of a specific
individual to perform the skills required for a specific job."
Given the
above definition, who could doubt the importance of competencies in our role as
staffing professionals to find, select, hire, develop and retain talented
people?
As a graduate student studying competency systems I once imagined, as only grad students can, an ideal world where a standard "tool set" could be used by recruiters to describe jobs. In my fantasy, if we used common terms to describe human activity that was needed to perform core elements of jobs at a high level then industrial psychologists and trainers would then collaborate with staffing to measure and validate these selected, developed or trained abilities. Correlating how these functions contributed to corporate performance would be a snap. Job seekers would have a real chance at understanding the gap between their offering of skills, knowledge and experience. Transfer between divisions, even companies would have high likelihood of success. And so on.
I had an early falling out around the science of staffing when I realized that the reality lay not in the science (it is relatively straight forward). Instead, the difficulty is in getting simple agreement from the many stakeholders. Today there are so many schema describing "competencies" that the Manhattan project I once envisioned is more like a Tower of Babel.
Rereading one of Wendell Williams’ excellent "Aha"
Reports (from October 2005) recently after returning from a conference on
standards, I was struck by his comment that "when it comes to defining a
competency-based systems- everyone has an opinion, people have their own vested
definitions, and university professors (who never managed a business in their
life) queue up to receive projects. It’s an exercise in futility."
I
couldn’t agree more.
The trouble is that with no common language - not here, not anywhere (well, maybe we do know one country that has developed a common set of competencies but it isn’t the US), we’re stuck with competing and overlapping meanings for terms that confuse rather than enlighten job seekers, recruiters and hiring managers - not to mention everyone who support them.
Discussions about competencies from competing and conflicting proprietary solutions vendors offer value but only inside the protected walls of the adopting firm. Outside, there are no transferable standards for recruiters, trainers, hiring managers or job seekers when everyone speaks a different language of skills knowledge and experience. Industry discussions about standardizing resumes and profiles, creating links to education and training and measuring how a company’s staffing process connects to business performance will simply remain as fantasies unless one or more vendors can come together and agree on a common lexicon.
In the absence of standards, more and more "artificial intelligence"
solutions are being touted as the glue to making sense of the disparate terms
and meanings. The most these hyped search engine promises can accomplish however
is to produce a gluey paper mache vision of the real thing.
Still
looking for the Manhattan Project.
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Mark’s Rant: If They Ask for Your SS# - Make It Up!
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In an October 9 Wall Street Journal article, Data Privacy Is Key Concern In Online Job Applications, by Perri Capell I was asked if I were concerned that an increasing number of companies are routinely asking for the candidate’s social security numbers as a required field in the application.
You bet. I responded (and the WSJ quoted) "either leave the application blank or, if you must include it, make it up." Clearly my point is that companies have no business collecting SS#s on tens of thousands of individuals that are never going to have their backgrounds checked. Most will be found unqualified or out of the running long before a background check becomes relevant.
I’ve not seen anyone promising to purge this highly sensitive piece of data either - except, of course, the real identity theft scammers masquerading as employers. This is a formula for disaster and some company (and their vendor) is sure to be seriously embarrassed.
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Your "Little Green Lies" Can Backfire
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SHRM included an excellent BusinessWeek article in their Workplace readings this week and suggested that more firms are marketing themselves as eco- friendly these days but failing to live up to their own hype saying that "Many consumers are becoming much more attuned to the concept of ’green-washing’, raising the bar for businesses who attempt to market themselves as eco-friendly."
The article, Little Green Lies by Ben Elgin is long but filled with great examples of the challenges facing firms who want to find the sweet spot of social and environmental responsibility and profit. Not an easy challenge to meet. Joining the green movement with more talk than action however will certainly backfire in recruiting as this generation of BS detectors will scope the hypocrisy of the firm’s leaders and simply move on.
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Social Media: It’s Here to Stay But - - -
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We’ve quite a bit to say about this subject but, for the moment, we would like to suggest that the Facebook and MySpace hype may be getting overblown. In recent conferences there has been quite a bit of talk about these sites along with a few speakers (in some cases without disclosing their relationship) touting that firms should be signing up with them. We disagree.
We do agree with the point that social media is going in-house and has the potential of taking recruiting pipelines (alumni, interns, affinity groups, employee referrals, etc.) to a whole new level. The point where we diverge is that the "public" networks are not the best applications for a corporation to adopt. Instead, numerous private networks - some recent startups and others that have been around awhile like SelectMinds might be the better way to go.
Having won an award last year, Starbucks is on the speaking circuit describing their internal social network. KPMG is quoted in an excellent article in BusinessWeek this month (The Water Cooler is Now On the Web) as having increased their alumni hiring to 14% with social media.
We are in favor of allowing employee access to ANY social networks and believe real measures of productivity will show that they offer advantages for performance (as well as the means to leave you if you don’t treat them right). Banning access is a sure means to cut off an entire generation of candidates. However we also believe there is a proprietary advantage for enhancing internal corporate communication through social networks that are restricted to employees.
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To Get Grounded - Get on the Ground
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We’re not looking for a job (although there may come a point in the next 10 years when working as a part- time barrista or Toll-taker on the NJ Turnpike, with benefits of course, might be the best option). We actually have several jobs in mind for our next career.
We no longer recruit. In fact, the last time either of us led a recruiting function people thought Boolean was something you did on an Argentinine ranch. We also haven’t hired anyone in quite some time. As principals of a two-person, international staffing consulting firm that is at its ideal size, we’re blessed to be working as much as we want, but don’t get to try out any of the latest pet selection theories or purchase assessment services. Being more than a step away from the three critical stakeholders in staffing - the recruiter, the job seeker and the hiring manager, requires an effort to stay current. Several things we do to stay grounded include:
Conferences: There are a lot to choose from (maybe too many) but attending conferences and listening to speakers with different "voices", especially those who lead (or who are recruiters themselves) or, impact them directly is one important activity - but only one. In person by the way offers a much different view about the truth behind the hype than online forums, vendor whitepapers, webinars, blogs or journals (which are also an essential source of information.)
Even watching, for example, a government bureaucrat with absolutely no
presentation skills sit on stage, shuffle case files and drone on about how her
office handles EEO complaints is an education well worth savoring (as we recall
those frustrating compliance audits we once endured). Beyond the implications of
the content and delivery, however, we note who is in the room and their
attention span. We note if other speakers are present and listening. The ones
who do, we tend to think of as more credible then the ones who show up just
before they talk and then leave right after. Joel Cheeseman is a solid example
of the former and, while his skewed view of the staffing space comes from
looking through a different window than ours, it is all the more valuable to us
because we know he is in the room listening.
We’re also interested in which
vendors spell each other from their booths in the exhibit room in an attempt to
learn something as opposed to trolling for prospects.
We are fortunate that we have an opportunity to speak but more and more we want to be a means for staffing leaders to have their voices heard directly. This year we moderated five very different panels. At SHRM’s Staffing Management Conference we moderated a discussion on the Candidate Experience (Electronic Arts, Whirlpool, Starbucks and Lenovo). In June in London moderated a discussion of Job Boards at the OnRec conference. More recently at the HR Technology Conference it was about Cool Sourcing Tools (Shally Steckryl, Eric Jaquith and Fraser Donnell). Last week at ERE we introduced the audience to five outstanding MBAs graduating from American and Georgetown Universities. In a few weeks we’ll be moderating a panel at Kennedy’s Conference with firms that are challenged with sometimes having a negative employer brand (Wal- mart, Enterprise, Whirlpool). Taking risks with these types of sessions forces us to listen.
Finally, we note the companies who are in the room - or those that are "always too busy recruiting to ever send their people to attend." We pay particular attention to who takes something back and improves what they do. We tend to think that the most competitive corporations with the most productive recruiters empower their people to learn. We see them at one or more of the events we attend each year. Always the same companies.
Some firms never show - insulated and incestuous they are comfortable in
their cocoon. Companies that need to improve the most invariably fail to make
time for real-time conferences, seminars, symposia, etc. They have numerous
excuses and a great ability to rationalize. But they fall further behind. It
speaks volumes to me about how work drives them rather than how they drive
themselves to make a difference at work they’ve chosen to do.
In the end we
always learn more from those around us at the conference then we could ever give
in return. It does take practice, keeping your eyes open and, listening before
filtering.
Connect with Job Seekers: There is a difference between people who have had their job for some time and those who were in the job market recently. It’s not a gap it’s a chasm. The pain is obvious but, like most painful experiences, it tends to fade with time once you’ve been hired. We need to keep the reality fresh. We’re firm believers that corporate recruiters, and especially sourcers, need to feel what its like on the other side of the interview desk and get away from the artificial nature of the corporate staffing process. In fact, if anything, the constant connection to job seekers and the data bases where we categorize them tends to lead to burn out.
We spend time every month on a college campus working with students and alumni in transition as well as visiting employment offices. It’s a great reality check and certainly balances the hype around Second Life as the next big thing. It’s hard for the flaws corporations have built into their process to fade into obscurity when you are sitting and advising an A, B, or C candidate about how and why they are not selected. Few corporate recruiters do it honestly. Most excuse their failure to respect job seekers by claiming they have no time or that legal issues take it out of their control. All BS. Most of the problem is simply a lack of training and the commitment to accepting responsibility for feedback as a basic job responsibility. Outsource it if you must but no candidate should ever claim their interest fell into a black hole. It’s not just the right thing, it’s good business and basic to our view of ourselves as a recruiting professionals. Start with the fact that only 11% of the (best) firms in the US tell ALL candidates when the job is closed and the new hire is onboarding. We can do better.
We once spoke to an all-hands group of 100 recruiters at an IT company in DC that hired collectively about 8,000 - mostly very hi-tech candidates. The recruiters were all technically astute and had all met extraordinary performance goals. We wanted to make a point about the difference between a competent technician and a worldclass professional and researched the recruiters in the firm to see what if anything surfaced. Something did surface and we pointed out one recruiter in the audience (to her embarrassment) as the only person in the room we would hire without having to meet her. We learned from notices posted on the web that 3-4 times a month she conducts classes around the area in churches and civic groups to counsel visibly disabled but technically proficient people on how to compete for a job in her company, or, if not her company, somewhere else.
Get Hands-On with Hiring Managers: Hiring Managers are not so patient with recruiters these days unless they know you are competent, committed and credible. They know there are lots of technology and tools, SLAs and such, but the ones I speak to are increasingly looking for more. Can you bring in knowledge of the business plans and the implications that these plans have for this hiring manager’s group? Are you in the know in terms of this manger’s position on the succession plan? Not to mention whether there are people internally being overlooked - or considered - and whether you or your HR partners are in the lead? Do you have skills to redesign your internal client’s org structure based on the group’s near and long term goals, current employees, gaps and the market availability - or is he/she more likely to call in outside help. Butts in seats or consultant? How tight are you with the comp folks dictating rewards? When was the last time you showed up unannounced on third shift (assuming a manufacturing environment) to better understand the manufacturing process, supply chain, accounting methods and supervisory issues first hand? Ever job shadow any of the positions you hire for more than an hour? Ever ride with a salesperson for week? Recruiters who come out of operations, sales and research functions have a lot to learn but recruiters without direct experience need to find visible means to get some.
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CareerXroads Colloquium 2008 Season
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Our CareerXroads Colloquium is wrapping up its 2007 season this week with a meeting at member JPMorgan’s facility in Jersey City, NJ. This session is a new one for our group - focused primarily on "Recruiting for the C-Suite." It’s a fitting end to an exciting year where our Colloquium grew, networked, learned, experimented and kept each other up-to-date on our profession. It’s a unique group and as a Friend of CareerXroads, it’s a group you should consider as you look for ways to get grounded.
We encourage you to learn more about our Colloquium. If you apply for membership before October 31 (and pay by the end of the year) you’ll also receive a $500 discount on certain membership levels. What are you waiting for?
The list is growing every day, so far returning members include:
Where you’ll find us next:
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Full details of CareerXroads’ schedule can be found here.
Good Hunting! Gerry and Mark
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Links to CareerXroads are much appreciated but we provide no reciprocal agreements with any site. We want to maintain a level of objectivity free from even perceived conflict of interest regarding our opinions. We have no direct relationship with any job board or career site.
Gerry and Mark work full time consulting, educating and discovering how talent and opportunity connect through emerging technology. If we can be of help, you know how to reach us.
CareerXroads
The Staffing Strategy Connection
By Gerry Crispin and Mark Mehler
mmc@careerxroads.com - 732-821-6652