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We can’t find the talent. Really? Try telling me that on your telegraph.

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I heard that not long ago from a friend of mine. He says he hears it all the time from heads of HR. We hear it too. We both had a good laugh about it.

Google. Twitter. Facebook. Referrals. Ads. Cold calls. LinkedIn. Research firms. Telephone sourcing. We still can’t find them.

You can find them. You can’t hook them.

If you are not getting the resources above, then you have every right to complain. You should navigate the politics of getting the right resources. Tell your CEO to wake up. But if you are getting the above, you may need to come to grasp a concept that’s tough to hear. It’s not your sourcing, its your approach.

There are thousands of companies that say talent is the most important thing. They use ATS systems, careerbuilder, and have a facebook page. But what are you doing as a company to distinguish yourself from the top competitor in the market? How does David beat Goliath? Well, it’s not by slinging stones at another company’s recruiting group.

If you want to sling stones, do it on the practice range, and sharpen your marksmen skills. If your prey is farther away and less in number, makes sense right? In fact, it may be harder to be a sourcer or recruiter at a less known company then a well known one. Why? Less applicants, stiffer competition, less marketing, etc. Now I am NOT saying that recruiters at name brands are weak. Not saying that at all. But do you really think that a recruiter who worked at Google recruiting in the IT group will have the same ratio of success working for the local branch of the state university and their IT group? Chances are it’s the same talent pool. Same people. But different benefit packages. Different compensation plans. All of a sudden, the driver is placed behind the wheel of an older sports car, but this one has a stick shift, not an automatic.

The new ANSI standard for cost per hired draft was published a while back. It’s a great formula and I was happy to work on it, but here is something I was saying the whole time – the more invisible you are, the more likely your cost per hire will be higher vs. competitors. Stop benchmarking yourself against the wrong people. Did it ever occur to you that your team may need twice as much effort, resource, or training to get the same talent your competitors get because their product or value proposition is actually perceived as better? Or maybe it is better in reality. Either way…apples to apples 🙂

Seth and Amy say “One Approach Across all Recruiting….Really!?!”

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I love that bit that Seth Myers does. Its even better when Amy Poehler gets in the act. If you are not Saturday Night Live fans, there is a skit that is done during the Weekend Update (a spoof on the nightly news) where the anchors review the news of the week by calling out the intentions or actions of celebrities, politicians and leaders that were broadcast that week, and by asking “Really!?!”

Its good comedy, because it points fun at how people tend to say things, do things, or attempt to do things that are either impossible, not really viable, a waste of time, or have little return.

Its budget season already, and there are talks of companies on the push for enterprise wide change – again. But before you go down the road with the great conversation “we have to do recruiting one way, and have one process” – I suggest you do a vision analysis.

Answer each of these using a traffic light
NO = RED
MAYBE/SOMEWHAT = AMBER
YES = GREEN 

Q1: have you performed a risk analysis?

Q2: does management really know the hiring manager problem and can define it?

Q3: was a worst case analysis on vision achievement, adoption, and realization performed?

Q4: have you developed a prototype within your proposed constraints, and made adjustments such that it can be replicated within those constraints?

Q5: will the vision take less than 12 months to fully install, realize, and adopt?

Q6: do you have an exit strategy from the vision if failure occurs or is imminent?

Q7: does the firm have a success rate of 67% or more with similar projects at an enterprise level? Remember failure means over budget, too many resources, or behind schedule (getting it done is assumed).

Q8: did you revisit similar attempts for enterprise wide HR change, and analyze the holes in those plans, and recalibrate this vision?

The Vision should go through these questions (plus another 40) without having red all over the board. There are over hundreds of assets like this in a well planned project, but if you can’t get past just these 8 during your vision stage without having red all over the paper, then all I can say to you is “Really!?!”

Actually – its just means you need to mitigate risks and make some changes before you move forward, but still…really!?!

Social Circles aren’t invented by Google – but they did capitalize

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The new Google+ is on the rise. 20 million users already in what seems an overnight success in social media. A new social media platform to add to Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter, assuming you are on one or more, not to mention the social interactions of Yelp, FourSquare, and so on.

What is Google+? Check out the web for more info, but its another social medium that has some of the same interactions as the others, but with a slight difference – you can separate your interactions by group – work ppl in one, family in another, buddies in a third, fantasy football contacts in a fourth, students in another, and so on. This allows you to think about what you are going to share or say, and then designate who you are going to share it with.

This way you can use a single platform to show how excited you are about your recent fantasy football acquisition without letting your boss know about it. Or share a great article on leadership practices without having your football buddies say “what..?”

Did Google+ invent this separation? NO. But a big pat on the back for creating a platform to leverage that.

Its not an unusual practice to use LinkedIn for professional, Facebook for personal, and Twitter for X. In fact, I have been doing that for some time, and I have been teaching that platform to students at NYU since MySpace was an actual space 🙂 The separation of your brand is critical to future jobs, your career, and even how people relate to you. To illustrate the point, I rarely post professional stuff on my personal FB page – I leave that to the Aspen Advisors FB fan page.

I do find it odd how I know things about people who I interface with professionally on FB. I know their children’s names, when they have babies, what their backyard looks like, and what they had for dinner. On LinkedIn, outside of the occasional person who wraps FourSquare or Twitter to their LI account, I don’t know ANY of that stuff.

And maybe that is what Google+ will really offer – an easy and clear way to separate the different facets of “your brand”. It will be interesting to see how Google+ allows you to integrate with other social media, and how people who have yet to break into social media will use the tool.

But the NYU professor’s lesson has been personified and aggregated (probably no thanks to me btw) – separate your circles, be deliberate in how you message to select audiences, and intake messaging by a specific mindset so you can process more effectively.

As for Google+, I declined my initial invitation. I am sure I will get another. I am so used to separating already 🙂 But if someone asked me and they were just getting started, I probably would tell them to check it out if they were invited.

Debt Ceiling + US Jobs = Red Herring

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Tough to avoid the two topics. So let’s address it head on. Its likely that a changing debt ceiling in the United States will have some kind of impact to the economy. That is not a big stretch 🙂

But will it impact jobs directly? Not significantly…but it makes great headlines.

Flustered Anchor people...

It sounds like a story Ron - but you don't understand it...do you?

There has been some statistical analysis that a US GDP swing of 0.01% equates to a monthly job growth of 5000. Some say the debt ceiling being raised could slow GDP growth by 0.06% over the next three years, so that’s 1 million less jobs during that time. But that is pretty hard to track or quantify directly – always has been.

Then there is the credit degradation of the US if the debt ceiling is raised, which can equate into complex economic factors that are way beyond me – but I am pretty sure that CEOs may be a little tighter with borrowing money if the credit markets are tighter, which can disable growth. This equates to some phantom number that is subjective based on a company’s tolerance for investment. It will probably mean a stricter control on government jobs, but again that’s speculation.

What we are avoiding (thereby the Red Herring)
I still stand behind the fact that we if we are not adding at least 200,000 jobs a month consistently, we are not getting it done. Yep – 200k per month. We still are down about 8MM jobs from 2008, and at 200k added a month, it will take us 3+ years to get back to “normal”. Over the last nine months, we are about at an average of 125,000 new jobs each month, so I am more concerned about the missing 75,000 x 9 months (675,000 jobs). That adds up. Quick. Last couple months I think we were all on vacation – 18000 adds last month? We need to do better.

We need a plan AND an emergency response. I don’t really see either being talked about, and I think that is why this debt ceiling + jobs discussion is a red herring.

Any economic crisis tends to get linked to jobs in the short term, but rarely does it impact the long term planning of businesses and their overall need for people who want to work hard and effectively.

The belt got pretty tight before the debt ceiling conversation happened, so I’ll go on a limb and say that its tough to squeeze more, so I don’t think that we are in for a longer term strain on job growth because of the debt ceiling. There are too many factors that are already impending it plenty, and we are lacking in this department so much, that I think any additional poor performance will be tough to really ferret out.

I think I will let MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News get their ratings and keeping talking about it though. I love it when anchors get flustered…

Lets Constantly Revisit our Business Strategy – but do Talent Strategy once a year

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You probably would never say that out loud in a crowded room of executives, right? But its amazing how that is exactly what we do. In September to December we start working on our workforce plans, and how many people we need, and our budgets and so on. We go ahead and make plans for staffing, and poof – we are done.

Meanwhile, we are having monthly business reviews, planning sessions on product development, and looking at acquisitions / divestitures. We are constantly strategizing and making changes to the business plan. But the talent plan stays constant and on the shelf.

When you adjust the business plan, just ask yourself one question..WWHRD…what would HR do? You have to ask that question. You may be planning on hiring, firing, transferring, contracting, growing, making project teams – and so on.

WWHRD

WWHRD

Start communicating and ask yourself that every time you address or even alter the strategy for the business. HR is there to help, and will come up with the compensation, talent acquisition, retention, labor, and other facets that they know needs to be addressed in order to make the change effective.

Funny thing about change – tough to do without people changing, but its sometimes the people we forget about the most 🙂