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Proactive, Aware or Reactive Talent Acquisition?

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Start using those words to describe your talent acquisition / recruiting organization and its behaviors. Proactive, Aware, and Reactive.

I totally stole this from HCI on a webshare the other day, but it hits a nerve:

Proactive – you start sourcing for a role before its posted or the manager is ready
Aware – you know about it, but don’t start working on it until its posted
Reactive – manager is ready, job posts, and you get moving

In the study HCI did, 25% of organizations said they were proactive, 50+% said aware, and the rest came in at reactive. My challenge to you is to go through your organization functionally, by business, or by level – whatever – and start figuring out what you SHOULD be (utopia), and then do what you COULD be (given realistic re-alignment of resources) and then what you ARE (your resources today).

Now have a discussion with your leaders, especially the business, and tell them the could and should, and have real business reasons for it. You can get more sales, higher retention, better quality, expand growth platforms – and so on.

I think you would find the PROACTIVE, AWARE, and REACTIVE definition combined with the SHOULD, COULD and ARE will get you a nice roadmap for 2012 🙂

 

Hey Twitter – you find me a job yet?

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Social networking is here to stay – that’s not news. But its funny how I am not hearing how it is finding people jobs. I have not heard that much about it, and I am in the industry.

Stop. I know there are people finding jobs via LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Recruiters – I know what you do for a living 🙂 Your job is to find people using all means necessary, whether you call someone on the phone or tweet them or FB them or whatever. You guys are doing an awesome job leveraging these tools.

I am referring to how people TALK about finding a job. When someone I know gets a job, I ask how did they find out, and they usually say “I found it on the web” or “my friend got me in” or something. But not as much “I found it on Facebook” or “I found it on Twitter”. Which I find interesting…

MEANWHILE…I keep hearing how friends and family are find dates on Match.com, eHarmony, J-Date or whatever.  What is wild is how people brag about finding their mate online. Their parents brag. Their siblings brag.

But why aren’t we bragging about our jobs the same way? Are we embarrassed? Is it considered weird to find your job that way? Many of the social aspects are the same.

I have a theory…people think and communicate differently professionally than they do personally. There is something about telling people about your professional experiences versus your personal experiences. Think about it – how often do you tell your parents about some meeting that you had at the office, conversely you tell everyone about how a meal you had at some restaurant was awesome. We post on FB our friends dancing, laughing, smiling and so on – but when was the last time you posted a pic from the office of a colleague…hmmm.

I don’t know if social media between professional and personal will converge completely for gen Y / gen X / baby boomers. I think the millenials will get it more. But we may need one more generation before work and play via technology completely merge and can’t be distinguished.

The trend may be  similar to how smartphones are perceived by teenagers. Every phone they have ever owned has texting, a camera, and the ability to facebook. I remember using a a car phone in the Cutlass Ciera wagon back in 93 and people rocking the Gordon Gecco phone in airports.

As you use these social networking tools to communicate – either as a recruiter or a candidate finding a job – realize that there is a difference between personal and professional communication strategies. If you find poeple on Twitter that does not mean their better, and finding a job on Twitter does not mean its weird. Assess people and jobs as you have in the past – we are still learning to communicate using these tools.

Functional Support and the Employer Value Proposition

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Functional Support is how much and how well various departments assist a person execute their role and responsibilities.

Typical functions include Procurement, IT, HR, Finance and Legal. The names you use internally may differ, but these organizations support the activities of the research, manufacturing, sales, and customer service organizations.

How these organizations support people actually vary greatly from one organization to another.

This factor can be overlooked during the recruiting / retention processes. How a company supports it’s team members can be a great advantage over it’s competition.

Recruiters should be able to learn about the support that candidates are coming from to help compare or prepare, and then leverage.

HR managers should be able explain to employees the different dynamics, but especially understand how powerful that service is and how it enables people each day.

Candidates should be asking questions on how these areas support their role, and compare to previous environments where they have been successful – and ask themselves if they have the same, more, or leas resources in order to be productive.

Employees should fins out how these areas support them, and start using them to their fullest. If you see something missing, ask about it and see if it can be changed. If it is, you may find that the organization is more enabling than you thought….but if it doesn’t respond…

The roles that are defined by an organization are always connected with others. How they connect and enable each role can have a significant effect on a persons success.

Place this into your consideration as you hire, promote, evaluate, or search for a new job.

Functional Support is part of Work Experience, one of the four corners of the Employer Value Proposition.