First of all, they are exhausted.

No wonder.  Job searching in the digital age is a labyrinth of dead ends and bogus directions.   I’m getting some amazing perspective on the “advice” these folks are being given on a daily basis.  Not by their dry-cleaner, but by so called “experts”; resume writers, outplacement firms and even corporate recruiters.  My conclusion?

We have to do better by these people.

This is a call out to all of us “so-called-professionals” – we MUST do better by these people.  Why?  Because the “buyers market” we are enjoying today will not last forever and soon enough the tables will be turned and we’ll be begging these people to come work for us.  When the job market turns (as it always does) these same people who are being given the royal shaft by US will be in the driver’s seat and all the employer-job seeker karma we are tossing out there will come back three fold.

DO BETTER #1:

Stop treating these people as commodities.  See them for what they are, human beings.  Dads, Moms, Husbands and Wives who have committed to providing for their families and promised them a bright future.  They are not “widgets”, they are not “applicants”, they are not “candidates”.  They are first and always, humans.  If you don’t have the time to treat them with the respect they deserve, you need to get out of the HUMAN resource business.  If you are bombarded with applicants and don’t have time to treat each one well – stop advertising your jobs like a desperate love seeker on every online dating site.  Attracting job seekers only to treat them like crap is THE NUMBER 1 DO BETTER.  If you can’t do better you shouldn’t be in the human resource profession.

Okay, so that’s a little harsh but in reality there are only a few reasons this terrible disservice to job seekers exists:

1. Recruiting Department laziness. Instead of working like headhunters, developing networks of talent and strategically tapping that talent – we post jobs.  It’s so lazy it’s laughable.  Ask any business owner how she built her business and I’ll give you $5 for every one of them who says “I put an ad in the paper and waited while customers bullrushed my store.”  Post and pray is a huge suck of resources, money and time and fails to accomplish the business’ objectives.  It just makes recruiting easier.  Lazy.

2. Over-zealous interpretation of DOL laws. I’m going to call out the legal and compliance teams as well as HR and Recruiting on this one.  There are NO laws that say you have to post your jobs on Monster, much less on Monster and Careerbuilder and eFinancial Careers, and The Ladders etc.  If you are a company over 50 employees you have to get your jobs to disadvantaged people and you can do this for $25 at JobCentral and be covered for your DOL requirements.  Don’t blame your “post happy” habits on your legal and compliance teams.  How about becoming an expert on OFCCP yourself and advising YOUR legal and compliance teams on recruiting requirements. Don’t have time?  See #1 above.

3. Horribly written job descriptions. I conducted a free webinar earlier this year on writing creative, targeted job descriptions to reduce the number of applications while increasing the quality of them.  I had a company that is doing this with amazing results present their data and it was shown that with a small investment of time you can STOP the flood of unqualified applicants.  I had 20 people attend.  Clearly this demonstrates the lack of interest or understanding (or both) of the affect a job description has on flow and quality of applications.  My only conclusion is that recruiting departments would rather focus on the cool and topical (for example social media – where I got 175 people to attend a webinar in February) than the simple and effective.  Look in the mirror before you argue.  How much energy is your department putting into social media today vs. fixing one of the largest, most consistent problems facing employers and job seekers?

Ok, so in my dream world, our recruiting department is being run like a headhunting firm (with time devoted to typical HR ’stuff’ we have to deal with in-house)  and when we DO have to post a job we’ve put accurate, honest and well thought out job descriptions onto our career sites and are getting less but better applicants.  Now onto another key thing we have to STOP.

DO BETTER #2:

STOP telling job seekers how to “game” the system.  Even worse, STOP giving job seekers “tips and tricks” that we all know don’t work!!  Here are some examples of what the “experts” are telling these poor job seekers that, although keeping them busy, have no tangible effect on their ability to get a job:

1. Join our Talent Community by filling out a general application in our ATS so we can find you when we have the right job. POPPYCOCK!  Seriously folks, if you are saying this to ANYONE today, please stop it.  It’s a dirty little secret of recruiting that I’m exposing to every job seeker I talk to – companies DO NOT search their ATS.  (Ok, argue if you want to but before you do, produce facts about how many hires you get from searching your ATS, how many previous candidates for jobs from last year you found in your ATS and hired for a new role – I’m serious, I’d really like to hear from you.) If recruiting is a ‘black hole” this is the most hungry black hole we create.

2. Go in and change a couple key words on your resume in our system to keep it fresh and findable. Wow, could there be a larger waste of time?  See #1 above but beyond that, whoever gives this advice to candidates has clearly not been unemployed in the last few years.  My job seeker friends apply to 10-50 jobs A WEEK!  Now you are telling them to go back to each of those applications or ATS systems and edit a word or two and THIS may help you be found? Why do we put the onus on the job seeker to make themselves findable in our ATS?  Because #1 above and even if you DO search your ATS (still haven’t heard from you…) – it’s a crappy search engine because it was never designed to be a search engine.  An ATS is a “cover your ass” tool devised in a dark dingy room by lawyers and over-zealous HR weenies.  But I digress.

3. You should have a professional Resume and Cover Letter written. Of course you need a resume and yes it should be professional but not “professionally written” necessarily.  Like job descriptions, resumes should be a highly accurate description of your history, skills and competencies and the impact you’ve had on your past employers (not touchy feely impact like “won the 5^th floor bake sale 3 years on a row” but business impact – revenue or cost savings) and should cause enough of a pause to anyone scanning (not reading, recruiters don’t read resumes they scan them) it to make them email or call you.  Ask a room of recruiters how many cover letters they read in a day – the answer ZERO.  Ask a room full of hiring managers how many cover letters they read – the answer less than 10% have read ONE.  Ask resume writers how many recruiters and hiring managers read cover letters – the answer EVERYONE!  See what I’m getting at.    Once you are in a final interview or next to final interview and you want to put a summary/cover letter whatever together go ahead, print it on bond paper in gold leaf if you want because you’ll be handing very few of them out.

I realize that this is uncomfortable for some to read – the truth is often more painful than the lie.  But you have to trust me that when I say these things to job seekers, they are shocked because the prevailing wisdom is in direct contradiction to what I’ve said here.

Whether you agree with anything I’ve written or are writing me off as a quack, please do a very simple thing and commit personally to treating job seekers with respect, kindness and dignity – it’s all they really want if they can’t work for your company and it’s what they EXPECT if they eventually DO.

In “my day” – OK, now I’m officially a “geezer” – when my folks went out of town and left me alone at my house I would tell a few friends to come over and hang out and get some pizzas and yes, drink some beer!  But that “few friends” always turned into a larger group of 20 – 30 and I’d find myself at my front door allowing some people in and telling most to go home.  These people were typically angry and may have TP’d my house or shaving creamed my car the next week.  I hope some of you can relate to how simple those times were.

Today, if you leave your teenager at home and he has the same idea that I did, it could potentially turn into a dangerous mob and a police scene as hundreds of kids show up to your house as evidenced by this recent story at ABC News:

“Social Media Leads to Home-Wrecking Party”
Home damaged after teens spread word of raging party through Facebook and texts.

The major difference between my “geezer” experience and the danger of today:

-Social Media

This example directly applies to your corporate ATS and demonstrates the true danger of using Social Media today if you are not prepared for the outcome.

In “traditional media” (newspapers, Monster, Careerbuilder etc.) you would post a job for an Accountant under the “Accounting/Finance” section – thus hoping you will get some qualified accounting professionals to see it and apply for your job.  Of course as we at AllianceQ know, you get much more than a few qualified Accountants applying, you get anyone who stumbles across your posting and wants a job with your company.  98% of applicants are not hired in a traditional media world.

In a Social Media World this situation has the potential to erupt into that “ATS-Wrecking Party”.  You see, if you Tweetthisjob or post it on the wall of your corporate Facebook page, you have EVEN LESS CONTROL of who sees it and applies than in a traditional media posting.  Once you TWEET your Accountant job, it is seen by anyone following your company.  It could be the ace accountant from your top competitor who applies but more likely it’s the Office Manager at Dewey, Cheatem and Howe who spends 20% of his time reconciling books and has now made the decision that he’s qualified for your role and applied.

This means your applications will rise while your hires stay flat and what used to be TP-ing my house or creaming my car turns into hundreds of disgruntled and angry customers/candidates.

What do you think these angry customers/candidates do?  They can’t TP your ATS or shaving cream your recruiting department so they TWEET about it or post it on their Facebook wall.  This is the vicious cycle of using social media for recruiting.

There are ways to break this cycle.

First and most important is to NEVER use Social Media in a Traditional Media fashion.  Tweet your employer brand or where you’ll be showing up for a job fair, post how cool it is to work at your company on your corporate Facebook wall but avoid putting JOBS on social media.  Your jobs belong in only one place – your career site.

Second, and just as important, is to find a way to capture social media traffic outside your ATS.  No, having them “follow” you on Twitter is not capturing them.  By “capture” I mean find a way to be able to find them when you actually have something for them.

Your brand doesn’t need the angry applicant pool (that already exists) to grow virally and create an uncontrollable mob.

In other words, don’t use social media to tell the world about the party at your ATS!

However, sometimes the biggest changes can occur by simply changing the words we use both internally (within our departments) and externally (with our candidates/customers and hiring managers).  Many a book has been written about how changing words leads to changes in perception, performance and promotion.  For example:

What does the word “overwhelmed” represent?

• “I have little or no power at the office”
• “My problems are bigger than I am”
• “There’s no hope for relief and it will never change”

What would you be saying and thinking if you switched to saying “In Demand” instead?

• “I’m important”
• “I’m needed”
• “I’m choosing where to give my time and talents”
• “I’m proud”

Yes, words matter, so here is your 2010 Talent Acquisition Dictionary.  Start with this and see what changes come simply by changing the words you use every day.

Old: Pipeline
2010: Talent Pool
The word “pipeline” has been many a recruiter’s enemy.  Hiring managers consider a pipeline to mean a bucket of interview-ready candidates you simply toss a net into and pull out a never ending supply of candidate choices.  The word “pipeline” begs the question “who else do you have?” from a hiring manager.  A Talent Pool represents a group of people from which you may be able to find a candidate or two based on the quality of your ongoing relationship with them.

Old: CPH
2010: QOH
Cost-per-hire is a meaningless statistic to anyone who understands the nuances of recruiting.  What goes into this measurement is of great debate and a high CPH is not a bad thing if you are hiring key talent, just as a low CPH is not a good thing if you are keeping costs low at the expense of quality.  QOH is harder to measure but significantly more meaningful to the business.  Simply put, higher quality is better than lower quality regardless of price or time (which is coming next).  If you reward your recruiters on QOH instead of CPH the department will flourish.

Old: TTF (I told you it was coming!)
2010: ROH
Time-to-fill has run its course and is no longer (if it ever was) a meaningful measurement to anyone but a recruiter being measured on it.  ROH (Retention of Hire) actually means something to your business partners.  This should seem self evident yet when you talk about retention with recruiters they are very quick to point fingers at managers, culture etc. (all of which a good recruiter knows about and screens applicants for by the way!).  So let me put these in context; if my recruiters have a very low TTF and the “company” has a high turnover rate, why are we measuring TTF?  Any business person understands that taking longer to hire the RIGHT person (who stays, performs and is promoted) is significantly preferable to hiring the wrong person (who gets trained, complains and quits or is let go) faster.  Really?  You want to argue this one?

Old: Applicant (or Candidate)
2010: Customer
The world is flat.  No, I didn’t write it, but it’s true.  It’s also true that you no longer control your employer brand.  Sure, you can pay for awards (remember, I’ve spent 18 years in this business, I know what “branding” means in most recruiting organizations), publish logos from organizations on your career site and talk a great game, all the while, treating people applying for jobs, interviewing for jobs and even getting jobs like cows in a production dairy farm.  Guess what?  People talk, twitter, Facebook, blog, etc. at increasing rates and what are they talking about?  Your terrible “candidate” experience.  This one is simple – treat every “applicant” (cold call, networking call etc. for you sourcers out there) like a potential customer of your company and all the above is still true but the talk becomes positive.  Again, this one is a no brainer but way too many recruiting departments are “too busy” to attend to the applicant pools they attract and are hurting their companies – watch it, marketing will find out about this as will sales and the C-suite.

And the final entry for today:

Old: Customer (is the hiring manager)
2010: Customer (is the candidate)
In any process development or improvement methodology (I use Tatham) the first step is to define the customer.  Same holds true when you start a business – “who is your customer?” is a fundamental step 1.  Step 2 is that you CAN NOT have more than one customer!  So if you have an existing recruiting process with the “customer” defined as your hiring managers – you cannot be successful in recruiting top talent.  This is a simple fact that, once explored with an open mind, becomes obvious.  Now let me calm your nerves and tell you that I built my career in Corporate America so I understand the idea that recruiting supports the business units they are assigned to.  But let’s not confuse “support” with the definition of “customer”.  Yes, you support the Marketing group in their recruiting efforts but if the marketing team is your “customer” then you must have a process that revolves around their needs and wishes, even if those needs and wishes tie your recruiting efforts to the post. 

Ok, you need an example.  Here’s a poignant one from one of the most respected recruiting leaders in the country today.  At this person’s company, the Sr. Leadership was clamoring that they weren’t seeing enough candidates from one of their top competitors (company A) and the pressure was on for the whole recruiting staff to up the ante in pilfering this competitor of top talent.  However, my well respected colleague took the initiative to do some research and discovered that in the recent year, of the candidates from Company A that were presented, only 22% were actually hired.  And of those, 78% turned over in the first year!  So, if this recruiting leader allowed his department to serve the Hiring Manager as customer, his team would be viewed as a complete failure (especially using our new “words” above).  Serve the candidate as customer and align your hiring managers as partners and you’ll find more success than you can imagine.

Ok, now simply try using some of these new words in your meetings, discussions and plans in your department and the change that so inspired dread in you as you read the pundits’ advice will come much easier this year.

But today, I’ll be using the idiomatic definition as defined in Wikipedia:

The term has been adopted into a general metaphor, where “silver bullet” refers to any straightforward solution perceived to have extreme effectiveness. The phrase typically appears with an expectation that some new technology or practice will easily cure a major prevailing problem.

This is a fitting definition for folks in recruiting departments across the world.  I’ve not run into a Recruiter or Sourcer this year who didn’t look at every technology as a “silver bullet”.   First the internet, then Google, Linkedin, and now social networking – you name it and chances are that the hopes and fears of recruiters will have rested on it at one time. 

I’m not sure why our profession is always in search of “silver bullets”.  I wonder if surgeons are always looking for a silver bullet – that technology or practice that will miraculously make their jobs easy and stress free?  Maybe construction folks thought the pneumatic nail gun was their “silver bullet” – after all, no hammering – hooray!  No nail pouches around my waist? YES! Finally, my job will be a breeze.  And then on Monday, they are back to crawling around 2×4 beams in freezing weather and they finally realize “hey, my job is hard – sure this new tool makes one part of it easier but overall, my job is hard.”  There are no silver bullets in recruiting.  Recruiting is hard work.

I believe that recruiting should be hard work.  Somewhere, with all the technology silver bullets we have at our disposal, the concept of recruiting being hard work got lost on many recruiters.  I know of “Recruiters” who harvest applicants from their ATS or simply get finalists referred to them by the hiring managers, process offers, put together hiring packets and move to the next one.  Recruiting?  I think not.  Somewhere we’ve blurred the lines of the verbs “recruiting” and “hiring”.  If you are taking pre-packaged applicants and simply moving them through a process to on boarding – you are NOT a recruiter, you are a staffing person or recruiting coordinator or some other version of an HR person.  Sure your job may be busy but it’s not hard.

A true recruiter works very hard for their money.  Not frantically hard like, “I’ve had to process over 20 offers this week” but rather emotionally hard like, “I spoke to my candidate’s husband last night and he grilled me on the career path his wife would have should she accept our SVP offer” or mentally hard like, “I cold called 27 candidates and got 25 “no’s” before I found my two candidates”.  Recruiting is and always will be a unique mix of art and science and those people who do it and do it well will attest to it being hard work. 

As always, the genesis of the movement to processing rather than recruiting lies solely in what the organization measures and rewards in their staff.  What you measure you promote.  Measuring and rewarding recruiters on time-to-fill, number of hires made in a year etc. drive processing.  To drive recruiting, you need to measure and reward things like quality-of-hire, retention and business impact of hires.

Measuring quality-of-hire, retention and business impact of hires is “hard” you say?  No Silver Bullets – I told you, recruiting (and managing recruiters) is hard work!

For those of you living in a cave for the greater part of this decade, “unfriend” is what you do on Facebook to remove a connection to someone else; you “unfriend” them. 

If you had money invested with Bernie Madoff – you probably “unfriended” him this year.

Sarah Palin probably “unfriended” Levi Johnston this year – you get the drift.

What strikes me is that to “unfriend” someone from your network is probably the rudest thing you can do in social networking.  Unfriend on Facebook and “unfollow” on Twitter mean that you originally wanted to be connected to this person and now find that connection so negative that you are dis-inviting them from your life.

OUCH!

So not only is our WOTY (word of the year) a really negative one, it shines a light on the whole social networking/public facing world the internet has created.  One in which we scamper like chipmunks to “friend” everyone we ever knew (and a bunch we don’t know but who know someone who knows someone we know or had dinner once with someone who knows someone we knew in college – Jeez!)  C’mon people.  Is this really the way of the future?

The internet lives we lead today have so completely removed us from relationships that we now do stuff to each other on the internet we’d NEVER do to each other in person.  And through this layer of protection, we now have created words that never existed to describe how rude we can be to each other.

Seriously, here’s a glaring example; you are having a Thanksgiving Dinner party and one of your friends asks if they can invite someone they know to dinner at your house.  This person shows up and drinks all your good scotch, eats the last dark meat and sucks whipped cream from the can – you are disgusted.  But do you ask this person to LEAVE?  No, you don’t, you wouldn’t.  You’d be gracious, you’d be kind and you’d never see that person again.  You’d talk about it and probably laugh about it later.

But today, we are accepting friend invitations, followers and LinkedIn connections from people we don’t know and some who we probably don’t want to know – all in the name of social networking.

“Old networking” used to be about a mutual exchange of value, either professionally or personally.  People  in your network mattered and there was benefit to having a network and being in one. 

Today, with our newest word of the year, I doubt the value of your network is much or that you consider adding value to your network (telling everyone on Facebook that you had a great cup of coffee is NOT adding value – no it’s not.) on a regular basis.

I think the Oxford Dictionary needs to come up with a new word for “networking” in today’s world.  One that actually describes what we are doing. Maybe “friendgathering” or “Followstalking” or “Linkifinity”.  She with the most connections wins.  Wins what?

Consider this.  We’ve lost our ability to communicate effectively face to face because we now do everything on the “net”.  We apply for jobs, we update our families, we find old friends (but don’t call), we send invitations, we send Christmas letters, we order pizza, we get educations etc, etc.

The Oxford Dictionary defines FRIEND as;

Friend:
-Noun
1. A person attached to another by feelings of affection or personal regard.

By doing all of our connecting electronically, aren’t we “unfriending” everyone?

I read an article on MSN Money that shows there are quiet but measurable signs things are getting better.  It’s an upgrade announcement of two major Executive Search Firms, Heidrick and Struggles and Korn Ferry International from “neutral” to “buy”.   This is based on a shift from a 0.6 decline in revenue in August to a 2.6 GAIN in revenue in September.  Another factor was the reduction in financial sector job losses from 40,000 last December to 2,300 in August to just 700 last month (Heidrick’s #1 segment). 

One of the analysts in the article made an interesting statement:

“Our view is that a resumption in executive turnover rekindles growth exiting a recession, which is spurred further by global economic growth in the second half of an expansion,”

So the takeaway is that the job hopping of executives (remember how prevalent it was in 2004-2006?) is a GREAT indicator that business is growing and jobs aren’t far behind.

Don’t be too upset if your CEO or CFO announce they are leaving the company.  It may simple be an indicator we are finally pulling out of this recession.

Yet this is the response I get most often (verbally, physically) when I ask recruiters about the candidate experience – especially the candidates who apply but are not qualified or have clearly applied for the wrong job.

But my answer is always “you need to” and apparently The Gallup organization agrees with me.  A 2008 study in The Gallup Management Journal (surveying a targeted U.S. sample of 1,376 adults aged 18 and over who were seeking a job – The sample consisted of those who are currently unemployed and seeking a job as well as those who are currently employed full time or part time and have searched for employment in the past six months) found that if you don’t care and aren’t treating all candidates like customers, you may be significantly harming your recruiting efforts.

Gallup’s findings include;

• 70% of job seekers gave feedback detailing at least one frustrating aspect of the process.
• Job applicants were most likely to mention frustrations regarding the lack of communication prospective employers demonstrated.
• half of job applicants who mention specific frustrations say these aggravations give them pause when considering the possibility of working for these prospective employers.

So why should you care about THIS?

Gallup asked the 72% of job seekers who shared the most frustrating aspect of their job search a follow-up question to gauge the impact it had on their opinion of the organization. Half of these prospective employees said the frustrations they mentioned made them question whether they wanted to work for the company. Thus, the frustrations of applicants are making it more difficult for companies to hire the talent they need.

So in Recruiter terms:  At at time when you are “building pipelines” and “establishing talent networks” at the front door, you are causing a significantly greater number of people to doubt you as an employer out the back door!!

Applicants’ relationships with prospective employers don’t stop once the interview process is complete or after they receive a note indicating that the company has already filled the position. An organization’s poor treatment of its job applicants is akin to failed customer service, and it can have a negative impact on the likelihood of a prospective employee — hired or not — to recommend the company as a place to try to work.

So for all of you who consider applicants a nuisance (after all, you ARE the social networking King/Queen – you’ll find your own candidates thank you) and have the “Who Cares?” attitude toward candidates – STOP IT.   Here are three easy steps to fix this problem – no excuses.

Start by caring about prospective employees as much as you do about your customers and current associates.  Never in the application process should someone from the hiring company put down an applicant or make the job seeker feel in any way that the organization does not care about them, regardless of whether they are a good fit.

Value applicants’ questions and concerns. Some organizations would say that because of the sheer volume of applicants and the resources needed for the process, there is simply not enough time to answer the inquiries they receive from prospective employees. But what if those organizations treated their customers the same way?

Make specific process changes to your hiring practices to convey respect and care for potential employees. Applicants crave communication from potential employers about the status of their job search, and organizations could eliminate much of job seekers’ frustrations by increasing the amount of real-time feedback they receive about their applications.

I recently spoke at Qualigence’s First Annual Recruitment “How To” Conference in Chicago about #3.  Not only is it possible but it’s happening at your competition right now!

Who Cares?  You Should.

And millionaires were made.

Today, we’ve seen a proliferation of niche job boards (to the tune of over 45,000 available) and the promise of the web (automate and create efficiency) has all but gone by the wayside.

Allow me to explain via example:
I have an Oracle DBA position I need to fill in Omaha, Nebraska. I’m going to pay this person $105K a year. Ready – go find them on the boards.

I have to search;
1. at least one BIG BOARD (my hiring manager wants to know I’m doing my job and if I’m not searching one, I’m failing according this dinosaur)
2. DICE – this is where the Techies live
3. The Ladders or 6-Figure jobs – I’m paying $105K remember?
4. Omahatechjobs.com – Don’t know if this exists but it probably does – you get the point
5. OracleDBAgurus.com – Ditto
6. my own network of DBA’s – none of whom are in Omaha nor want to relocate in November
7. yada yada yada

Get it? By creating access to the universe, the world wide web put talent at our fingertips. By carving it up into tiny chunks (and charging us to look at every chunk) the job board industry has accomplished three things;

A. Made a TON of money in the last 5-7 years – all from Corporate America’s recruiting budgets
B. Created a confusing and frustrating world for Job seekers
C. Reduced the efficiency of Corporate Recruiters (see example above)

Thanks!

But why has this happened? Basically it’s a technology issue. We are still using the same technology (keyword search and boolean search strings matching two really poorly written documents – resume and job description) that we used in 1995. Because if you have “too large of a database” of people, your technology can’t get you closer to the right person. Thus, you divide up the database into micro-chunks (over40jobs.com, mommyjobs.com etc.) and the simplistic technology we have can get you closer to the right population.

Capiche?

The “Yeah So” part.

SO, the solution to this unsustainable model is to remove the invisible barriers, the walls so to speak, put around the sub populations and use evlolved technology to do the parsing of talent.

The “Result” part.

The results would astounding;
1. Single place for Job Seeker to go to be found for a job by any company according to their personal desires and work styles.
2. Single place for recruiters to go to search and pull back “interview-ready” talent; pre-interested, pre-qualfied and perfect for the job you have today or will have tomorrow.
3. No more post and pray – searching becomes first action because it works.
4. Dramatically less cost to Recruiting Departments – DRAMATICALLY
5. Dramatically more efficiency and ROI or Recruiting Departments
6. Lots of niche job board owners in the database looking for jobs.

It’s time we put technology to use for Recruiting. Not the same technology re-branded or bundled into an “algorithm” but something really different, really simple and really NEW.

The name comes from the fact that there are some games where the sum of the player’s payoffs at the end of the game sum to zero. Poker is a good example. Imagine you and I play head’s up poker. If at the end of the night I’m up $20 then, by definition, you are down $20. Our payoffs, plus $20 and minus $20, sum to zero. The point being that in zero sum games my wins define your losses (and visa versa).

By the definition of this game, no rational individual could look at recruiting and hiring as a zero sum game – the fact of the matter is that there is enough talent in the marketplace so that everyone can have theirs.  My wins should not define your losses (and visa versa).

As a Recruiter, you may be rolling your eyes right now saying “no way Phil, I have to beat my competition for talent and steal what I need so they can’t have it”.  I’m sorry for your neanderthal view of the world.  It’s 2009 and evolved organizations realize that the power of WE is much stronger than the power of ME.

Or at least they are “saying” they do.

To truly understand this concept, you have to have an introduction to the term “open source”.  Originally coined to describe the phenomenon of formerly proprietary (read Zero Sum) software companies realizing the amazing technological and financial benefits of sharing openly their software code.  Now as a Recruiter, if you think you have a death grip on your candidates, it’s nothing compared to software developers of the late ’80’s and early ’90’s (before Open Source) as it was once thought that is you shared this information it would kill your business.

The opposite is actually true.

Through collaboration and open sharing of information all parties win.  Think of the iPhone and the thousands of applications being developed in basements around the world.  Couldn’t happen if Apple kept their source code under lock and key.  Apple is a great example of eliminating the zero sum game (we have to develop all iPhone apps) and in place of it – creating networks of sharing and mutual gain.

No, it’s not Utopian – it’s web 2.0. and beyond.  You may still be acting in a zero sum game mentality  in recruiting – this is why you struggle each day/week/month/year to recruit and retain the best employees.  You are limited in your ability to produce amazing results just like the software companies of yore were.

By harnessing the collective effort of an “open” recruiting system you will eventually hire better people faster and they’ll be higher quality than you are hiring today.

But beware.  There are companies who are trying to make you believe they are “sharing” candidates for the benefit of all.  Check under the hood of any “candidate exchange” or proprietary talent network opportunities.  If there are limitations (only people with certain ATS systems or only people associated with a particular company etc.) to who can participate in the program it can never be considered “OPEN” and is therefore a carefully hidden “Zero Sum Game”.

You’d never find a steer branded  “rocking H” wandering the stables at the “lazy M”.  A brand means something very REAL in livestock.  It means commitment.

And in Corporate life, a “brand” can mean commitment; commitment to quality, commitment to innovation, commitment to community etc.  

But come down another layer to the “employment brand” the whole subject gets pretty “squishy”. 

All of a sudden, the term “brand” means more of an aspiration than a commitment.  You would never see a steer not living up to it’s “brand” and rarely do you find a company not tied inextricably to it’s corporate brand but in “employment branding” there is way too much gray area.  But why?

The essence of employer branding is to attract talented individuals and ensure both they and existing employees identify with the organization – and its brand and mission –  to produce desired outcomes for organizations.

The discourse occurs when image triumphs over substance and what is publicly proclaimed is in conflict with reality.  Here, employees both tenured and new find the organization lacking in “brand” integrity.

So how do you avoid the “temporary tattoo” employer brand?  Simple.  Be real.  Inspect your brand; what keeps your star employees at your company and what attracts new ones?  What causes game changers to leave?  Do the analysis, be willing to be challenged and then set programs and culture changes to fix what is broken.  In short – live up to what your brand IS, not what you want it to be.  In the end you’ll attract and retain the talent you can and not the talent you think you should be.