The Investigative Recruiter

Linguisting Framing II

2006-08-09T06:00:00-04:00

The reason you want to pay attention to the frames used in job descriptions is because we humans don't hear the individual words you use, we hear the frames. It's as if words bounce off, but the frames are absorbed. In a way, the linguistic frame bypasses the intellect by giving you an overall sense or understanding of the word. If you use the wrong words, the frames they evoke can run contrary to the message you're trying to get out there. A classic example happens to be the title of Linguist George Lakoff's book Don't Think of an Elephant. Saying that actually does get people to think about a pachyderm. (And if you enjoy politics, his book makes for a fascinating read.)

According to Wikipedia, the basic idea behind frame sematics theory is that one cannot understand the meaning of a single word without access to all the essential knowledge that relates to that word. (Check my prior post for examples.) The theory was developed by linguist Charles J. Fillmore , an Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at UC Berkeley. One major project of his is FrameNet . You can use it to look up the frames of the words you use to recruit a candidate either verbally or in writing in a job description. FrameNet comes with a users manual, which you will need to understand the frames better. Not every word has been documented, but by spending a little time examining the frames that are in the database, you will start to realize the deeper levels of meaning contained in the words you use to describe your opportunity.

In my last post, I used "job" as an example, describing the situations and players that word conjures up. I subsequently searched for the word "job" in the FrameNet database and up came the frame of "being obligated". And when you think about it, one does feel obligated to do a job. The word "opportunity" (which is not yet in FrameNet) isn't saddled with as many negative associations.

So take a moment to re-read your job descriptions and consider the frames of the words used. Edit out those that have negative associations and include positive ones.

Linguistic Framing

2006-08-08T06:15:05-04:00

One powerful way to get more candidates interested in exploring an opportunity for which you are recruiting is to rewrite the position description, and in so doing, linguistically frame the opportunity to make it more appealing. UC Berkeley Linguistics Professor George Lakoff has written a great deal about the meaning of framing in linguistics, "The first thing to know about language is that it expresses ideas and thoughts. Every word is defined with respect to what cognitive scientists call a frame. A frame is a conceptual structure of a certain form."

Lakoff goes on to give an example, "Suppose I say the word "relief." The word "relief" has a conceptual frame associated with it. Here’s the frame: In order to give someone relief, there has to be an affliction and an afflicted party -- somebody who’s harmed by this affliction -- and a reliever, somebody who gives relief to the afflicted party or takes away the harm or pain. That reliever is a hero. And if someone tries to stop the person giving relief from doing so, they’re a bad guy. They’re a villain. They want to keep the affliction ongoing. So when you use only one word, "relief," all of that information is called up. That is a simple conceptual frame. "

More evolved recruiters should consider framing in their position descriptions. Let's just consider the framing differences between the words "job" and "opportunity". A job is something you have to do, but probably don't want to do. It means you have a boss that tells you to do it anyway. It mans you're a worker, stuck in that job, which is likely dead-end and subject to layoffs. It speaks of factories and conveyor belts and sweat shops. An opportunity, on the other hand, suggests the potential for prosperity, if not wealth creation -- the chance to be a success. You are likely an employee, not just worker, because you have talent and creativity deserving of that opportunity. And you report into someone who isn't your boss because he doesn't boss you around. Rather, he seems more like a colleague or peer because you're more empowered and because you are on the verge of achieving something extraordinary.

Two simple words: "job" and "opportunity", two completely different frames. Virtually every word that you use in a position description (or should I say "opportunity description"?) carries with it a linguistic frame. That frame wraps around a far larger picture than you can imagine, a picture you are painting with words. So make the picture vivid, compelling, and competitive. More on how to leverage framing in your job descriptions in my next post.

If You Fish the Bottom, All You Get is Flounder

2006-08-03T10:28:06-04:00

Bottom fishing, when applied to recuiting, refers to going after low-quality candidates. Advertising a job on the Internet and waiting for applicants to "swim by" is akin to dropping a weighted hook, letting out the line until the lure hits ocean floor, and then as, Otis Redding so aptly put it, just "sittin' at the dock of the bay, watching the tide roll away. Yeah, I'm just sittin' on the dock of the bay wastin' ti-hi-hi-hime."

While one can find terrific active candidates who have been downsized recently through job boards and postings, a greater majority of the applicants are unqualified if not disgruntled. (Not that workers don't have a lot to be upset about these days . . .) Posting a job to the general public is like casting a net that scrapes along the bottom of the sea. In the end, you get flounder. In fact, that particular fish's name says it all: "flounder", which according to Merriam-Webster means 1 : to struggle to move or obtain footing : thrash about wildly and/or 2 : to proceed or act clumsily or ineffectually. Do you really want to fish the bottom?

Another thing bottom-fishers do is put the search out to contingency firms. Now, I think the world of contingency firms. Nobody works harder or faster. But, in the end, it is a numbers game. If the contingency firm can't make a fairly immediate placement, they're done. They can't afford to devote additional time and resources to tracking down harder-to-find candidates. I am amazed at how many HR practices put openings out to contingency firms and the jobs languish, unfilled, for six or more months. They have decided that free search, until a position is filled, is somehow fraught with less risk. Yet, leave a critical post unfilled that long and you're putting departments, if not whole companies, in jeopardy. Even seemingly less critical unfilled openings exact a price in lost productivity and diminished moral of the overworked employees making up for the missing worker. Do you really think you can get something for nothing, or very little?

To go after the "big fish", an employer needs to invest in the relationship with your oursourced recruiting firm. Get some skin in the game. Show them you're just as invested as they are and then work together to raise the bar and evolve your companies recruiting practice. A smart investor, of course, makes money in the end. With the right firm, you can deliver the people that will make a difference to the company's bottom line. And that can only mean good things for you and your career.

So if you have positions that have remained unfilled for months, it's time to "cut bait" as it were. Consider fishing in different waters, using different lures. Measure the results. And partner with a quality firm that can, in addition to finding you qualified candidates, also advise you on how to make the position more competitive in the market place. If you're having trouble filling the position, you must find out why. And if it is because there's an extreme shortage of workers, you need to identify "work arounds": new places to look, new profiles to consider.

In addition, you need to ask whether what your company is offering in compensation is competitive in the marketplace. If it isn't, you need to sit the hiring manager down and discuss the implications and the opportunity cost. In the end, bumping the salary up or providing more competitive benefits in the end will likely cost less than searching for the brain-addled who will agree to be paid less than the going market rate. You must confront any disconnects and fix them. That's when you can start going after the really big fish . . . the "best of the best" in every function and at every level of experience. Do that, and the whole world will be your oyster.

Bottom Feeding: A Parable (and True Story)

2006-08-02T16:45:12-04:00

I went fishing in the Long Island Sound for the first time this weekend. And also, in another precident setting event, I caught a gigantic flounder. It filled my ice chest, which kept popping open as the fish tried to find a way back to the salt waters from whence it came. And as I returned back to the dock, I scrolled through ways to prepare the fish and decided upon simply sauteeing it in lemon and butter. Still I braced myself for what was to come. Having spent my childhood fishing fresh water for trout, I knew that if I wanted to cook it, I'd first have to gut the thing. . .to clean the fish to prepare it for the skillet.

The only thing is, as I examined the flouder in my sink, the creature, upon closer inspection, looked positively alien. It's left side was also its bottom; its right side was also its top and also its face -- its two eyes (might there be more?) residing there. So the prospect of simply slitting the thing down the middle of its belly from its gills to its tail, as I used to for trout, was impossible. It didn't have a belly because the anatomy made little sense. In the end, I learned one doesn't gut a flounder, one filets it. What's more, the resulting meal, my dear friends, was miniscule .. . this gigantic bizzarro fish yielded very little good eatin'. My mistake? Bottom feeding. I'd hooked a creature that was about as low as you could get, depth-wise. He lived on the bottom of salty brine.

So what does this have to do with recruiting? Everything. More tomorrow.

I Don't Want a Resume: I Want a Brand

2006-08-01T09:11:25-04:00

Resumes are the currency of recruiting. In the world of human resources, it has become a product that gets acquired and ultimately delivered to a hiring manager . . . a document that says "see how hard I've worked on this search!" In fact, it is hard to get a candidate in for an interview without it. Its become so valuable that Monster even pays its affiliates $1 per resume to build out its massive database. But in the end, it is simply a chronological listing of employers, titles, descriptions, and education. There is nothing in there that tells us this candidate is the one. The problem with resumes is that, in the end, they are all about quantity. And this vexing problem multiplies the larger a database grows.

What candidates need to understand, and what recruiters need to facilitate, is that one's brand is more essential than one's resume. A number of authors have written extensively about personal branding. All you need do is dial up Amazon.com and search their books index with the keywords "personal brand". Still, that thinking has yet to transform the currency of resumes into the value of a candidate's brand.

Interestingly, the accounting world actually does define the worth of branding. They call it "good will", which the wikipedia defines as " an important accounting concept that describes the value of a business entity not directly attributable to its tangible assets and liabilities." So the conundrum becomes if one's own brand isn't tangible, how do we transform it into something that is? Resumes have tried, but have failed in that regard. Well-done personal resume websites start to suggest image and brand. But if a candidate doesn't grasp his or her unique value proposition, then he can't possibly convey his brand through a personal website or resume.

Good will expressed through groups is known as "social capital". And that is the currency we tap whenever we check references. But it would be so much easier if candidates focused on branding themselves qualitatively from the start, defining, for instance, what one is "the best" at in comparison to another individual or group. Inevitably, choices must be made between candidate A and B.

Recruiting by Email: Don't Assume They're Being Delivered

2006-07-31T15:57:07-04:00

Recruiters who rely heavily upon email to develop candidates might be shocked to learn that a third of all legitimate email is erroneously blocked or filtered by Internet Service Providers and SPAM filters. And when you think of all the time that went into developing the candidate IDs that led to your outreach, if you think about the time that you spent crafting your email to each individual, if you think about the resulting delay of now having to get to that person by phone to make initial contact, and if you think of the additional people you'll need to contact to make up for the ones you can't reach . . . that 30% is exacting a tremendous cost on your productivity.
   In fact, as SPAM worsens and more ways to combat it are tried, the blocked permission email problem is likely to worsen as well .. .that according to Jupiter Research, a division of Jupitermedia Corporation. Its reseach has found that that the cost to online marketers of permission e-mail messages being erroneously bocked as SPAM will balloon from $230 million in 2003 to $419 million in 2008. So it is folly to assume that a candidate isn't interested simply because he hasn't replied to your email.
   Fortunately, there is a way to check if your email is getting through. I actually learned about it from the people at our Applicant Tracking Software (ATS) provider after my husband (who shares the database) sent out a an email to someone who had signed up for his mailing list. That person, apparently crazy as a loon, complained to the SPAM police and they, in turn, blocked ALL outgoing email sent from our ATS provider's mail server. I mean, they blocked all outgoing email for every single company that was a client of our ATS provider! Needless to say, they were upset. And, of course, so were we.
   The bad news is that there is little you can do to keep a crazy-person from misreporting you as a mass emailer. However, you can monitor your status to catch a problem the moment it happens. You can try a service called deliverywatch.com. The service costs some $55 a month, but you can try it out for free for 15-days to see if you find it worthwhile. The service will tell you whether your mail server IP addresses are on public blacklists (as ours had been, until we straightened it out.) And it checks your emails against the most widely used SPAM filters to determine whether there is something in your email that is setting off the filter. Delivery Watch provides you with a set of standard reports that help you pinpoint what's gone wrong with your email, so you can increase your chances of your missives getting through.

How to Wiki 3

2006-07-27T16:36:42-04:00

If you want to "wiki while you work" and recruit, there are some things to keep in mind to super-charge your wiki.

You'll need to decide what categories of information you'd like to keep and set up initial pages linked to the home page. Wikis are, in essence, pages that are linked together in a hierarchy .. .kind of like an organizational chart with the home page as CEO. Your wiki will grow as team members add new pages that are (or, rather, should be) linked to existing pages. By establishing a structure at the beginning, you'll keep your wiki from descending into chaos with a jumble of interlinked and orphaned pages.
Keep information in the wiki that doesn't fit in your candidate tracking database. In addition to team member pages, we share Internet resource links, hot tips, work schedules, to do lists, meeting agenda, meeting minutes, competitor intelligence, and also a snapshot page of active candidates who've been presented to the client and are potential hires.
Page names should describe their content. While you (and Shakespeare) may ask , "what's in a name?" Well . . .everything. If you don't call a page what it is, your navigation will suffer. Avoid abbreviations that will leave other team members clueless.
Use CamelCaseNamesForPageTitles and when you sprinkle those CamelCaseNames into the text on a page, most wikis automatically create a link. Very cool!
Avoid attachments whenever possible. You can attach some reference documents but do try to copy/paste text from a document onto a wiki page so it can be readily accessible and linkable.
Choose a wiki gardener. This person will determine useful content for the wiki, prune away any irrelevant pages, link orphaned pages to their proper parent page, standardize formatting, rename pages to describe their content better, keep content current, break long documents up into more manageable sub-pages, and evangelize wiki use within your department or team.

For more on using wikis for recruiting, check my last two posts. See you in wiki-wiki land!

Which Wiki to Use

2006-07-27T08:24:41-04:00

If you've decided to use a wiki for reruiting, the next thing you'll have to do is decide which software or solution to use. There are a number of offerings out there and you'll be confronted by a number of different implementations. For an overview, the first place to visit is wikipedia (notice a theme emerging?) for its listing on wiki software. Pay special attention to each wiki's ability to search its own content -- the bigger a wiki, the more robust its search capabilities need to be.

You can either install a wiki on your own corporate server or you can use an web-based product. MediaWiki is a server-based offering that is free -- the same software used by Wikipedia. That's great if you've got IT staff or if you're geekier than I am. But if you'd rather not install your own and would like to get up and running immediately, you might want to try Socialtext, Atlassian's Confluence, or JotSpot. I'm currently using the latter. Like Socialtext, JotSpot is free for a handful of users. If you already have a group on Yahoo, you can try PBwiki.

In my next post, I'll offer a few more tips for wiki newbies.

Wiki While You Work

2006-07-27T07:36:55-04:00

While most recruiters utilize applicant or candidate tracking software, there is always critically important information that doesn't quite fit into the the assigned fields and relational databases. As Kevin Wheeler here on this board pointed out: " A blog or a wiki can form the basis on an internal or external community of recruiters where this kind of information can be exchanged. This is a form of knowledge sharing and transfer that, when properly done, can save thousands of hours of work and bunches of money. "

So let's take that idea a step further . . .what can we recruiters use a wiki for?

A User Directory: First, it can be a user directory detailing more than a ATS will allow or more personal info that you wouldn't necessarily want cluttering up the ATS. You can feature a personal homepage with contact details and current searches.
Lists of Resources: Share your favorites by linking to web pages that you access frequently.
To-Do Lists: Use it to capture personal notes and lists of tasks.
Meeting Agendas: Develop meeting agendas throughout the week and pop in additions as you go.
Meeting Notes: During the meeting, record the minutes directly into the wiki.
Capture your footprints - track where you've researched and where you plan to source next your search assignments.
Competitive Intelligence: Track the competition, recording relevant updates.
New Business Development: Record ideas about prospective clients and partnerships.
Brainstorming: Collaborate on solving problems as well as developing new solutions and offerings.
Best Practices: Share relevant articles and tips
Documentation: Publish "how to" documentation and company manual so the business can keep running smoothly when key workers are off.
Glossaries: Every industry that we recruit out of has its own language that it uses. Every company has its preferred terms or jargon.

Wikis work well in a highly collaborative or networked environment, which, when you think about it, is a natural for recruiting. In my next posts, I'll detail wiki choices and offer more tips on how best to "wiki while you work".

Big Brother: Tapping .Gov Databases

2006-07-26T08:42:52-04:00

The amount of information that is available online about any one of us is unsettling. Big Brother is alive and well and capturing terabytes of data (TB:data storage capacity equal to 1024 gigabytes or one trillion bytes.) And while the Right to Privacy part of my being screams in horror, the Right to Know side is thankful for powerful government database that make finding potential candidates easier.

I firmly believe that every employed individual has the right to consider the best opportunities out there. If, upon review, one's current job remains the best, then their commitment has been reaffirmed. If not, well then that individual has the right to leverage their full market value. While companies may try to keep their workers hidden, the government does a very good job of removing the cloak of secrecy.

Let us take a look at a few of the vast repositories:
FEC.gov

If you click on the link above, you've visit the advanced individual search page to search the campaign contribution database of the Federal Election Commission. If one types in "Microsoft" into the Employer/Occupation field, one pulls up a gigantic list of every Microsoft employee who has given money to any federal election campaign, complete with titles. The Campaign Finance Information Center takes that a step further, by aggregating contribution data at federal, state, and local levels.

THe US Patent & Trademark office is another great place to find talent in the form the creators of patentable inventions that include technologies, processes, and pharmaceuticals. Simply select
"Assignee Name" in the Field 1 dropdown menu and type in the name of a company in the Term 1 box.

And, of course, there are professional license databases where you can find CPAs, lawyers, doctors, realtors and any other kind of individual who has to be licensed in order to work. Search Systems offers the original, largest, and most up-to-date directory of state licenses websites.