On Talent

Talenteering--The Manifesto

In my post Friday evening I featured the first talenteer--Layne Buckley of Plantronics. You may also notice a new link here for the new Talenteering Manifesto that I have been working on. Layne was the first featured talenteer, because he truly represents the talent relationship management values that are expressed in the manifesto. First and foremost talenteering is about talent relationships--the continuous pursuit of the best candidates possible for every position--something Layne and Plantronics have honed in on. In the manifesto, I have defined the 7 Habits of Highly Effective Talenteers (with apologies to Stephen Covey). The 7 habits are summarized here:

1. Who do you really need? You have to have a sourcing plan that looks out at least 6 months. Interfacing with the business is imperative to accomplish this. In the Talenteer post of Friday I talked about sitting in meetings with Layne at Plantronics to get exactly this insight.
2. Where do you find 'em? Identify sources of potential candidates--especially for key strategic positions. In Layne's case he is working both active candidates mined from job boards and using a variety of sources to identify passive candidates including relationship networking software, networking events, referrals, and many other sources.
   a. Don't forget employees as a source. As Tom Peters so often points out in Re-imagine!, the top talent is looking for a challenging great place to work. Plantronics has an employee mobility program that is very active, encouraging all employees to participate.
3. Make them want you too! Every position requires a tailored message that will communicate in a style for the position what makes it compelling. Tailored emails, job descriptions, specialized talent portals are all ways to make the company and its positions more interesting to potential candidates.
4. Now tell them why they should want you--often! Communicate with the talent pool on a regular basis to send news about the company, seasons greeting, and any other good reason to communicate. Give the talent pool multiple ways to receive communications (email, RSS (more on this later this week), news portal, and other creative ways to get the word out will get candidates interested. This is another area that Plantronics excels. As they grow their talent pool, they leverage the relationships to build the pool into a community--or better yet several communities for engineers, marketing, sales, IT, and other positions by communicating ofter, including but not limited to open positions.
5. Get back to 'em as soon as you have something of interest. By doing the work (and it is work) of developing talent relationships ahead of demand, the talent pool is receptive (and maybe even anxious) to receive information about open positions. The sourcing and relationship development in advance of demand is what allowed Plantronics to reduce agency spend by $1.3M in a year at the same time reducing time to fill and improving candidate quality and hiring manager satisfaction.
6. Get engaged. Make sure that candidates that do apply hear back from you immediately about where they stand. Tell them what the process will be and keep them informed. Too many companies have "black hole" reputations when it comes to recruiting. This is another area where Plantronics has improved since adopting a talenteering approach. They have a very involved process, often involving as many as 12 people in the interview and assessment process, and then time to discuss and decide following. Candidates are kept in the loop as well as possible and are told ahead of time how the process works.
7. Measure. Refine. Iterate. This may be one of the areas that the talenteering approach at Plantronics absolutely shines. Layne is a statistics nut and surveys hiring managers and candidates frequently about what is working and what is not. Candidates who accept offers are asked why--candidates that did not accept offers or who did not apply are asked why not. All of this data is used to improve the processes

I hope this posting helps put some more legs on the Friday post about the talenteering approach at Plantronics. Read the Talenteering Manifesto. Let me know what you think. Use the comments link at the bottom of this post--I want to hear from you. Most of all I'm searching for more talenteers. If you have a story, let me know about it.

Totally Talenteer #1

I just returned from a whirlwind west coast swing visiting 6 customers, numerous prospects, and going on a sales call or two. I'm beat!

But I couldn't let the opportunity pass to feature a true talenteer. I've posted before about talenteering--the proactive, strategic, visionary, beyond recruiting role. I will continue to post about it. Today, I thought it would be great to discuss a real world example.

Layne Buckley, the staffing manager at Plantronics, is a true talenteer. Plantronics is worldwide leader in lightweight plastic headsets. Layne joined them a little over a year ago. Prior to Layne's arrival, most of the staffing processes were entirely paper based. Now they are almost entirely paperless, and to a large extent self-service for both candidates and hiring managers.

Proactive: I sat in a couple of meetings with Layne with key organizations where he was trying to get a better handle on their future hiring needs, and even more so what the ideal candidate profile would be. This kind of foresight is common with Layne's approach to help him get a better handle on source planning and actual sourcing requirements.

Technology: Layne runs frequent candidate mining "expeditions" to refresh his target candidate lists. For active candidates, Plantronics uses candidate mining to automate the searching for specific candidate types across numerous job boards with a single set of search criteria, saving weeks of search time by recruiting teams--using technology to screen the candidates applying for jobs. This frees up staffing team members to do more strategic activities such as tapping into passive candidate pools. To accomplish this Layne's team makes great use of relationship networks such as Spoke, LinkedIn, Plaxo and others to reach out the passive candidates. According to Layne, "In many ways the resume is becoming obsolete.  Hiring managers view them skeptically because of the amount of predictable embellishment.  Even when not embellished, resumes rarely address a specific position, forcing the hiring manager to search for the desired skills.  With relationship networking, Plantronics finds people currently doing a specific job.  They are encouraged to join the Plantronics talent community, minimizing the impact of and the need for a resume." Plantronics also has a great careers page that is both visually appealing and candidate friendly.

Relationship Building: In addition to sending job notifications, Plantronics regularly reaches out to it's 35,000 candidate-strong marketing list with company news, holiday greetings, and relationship builidng messages. This keeps the candidates on the list "warm" for future opportunities. These efforts have increased the opt-in talent community by 481% and job views by 505%--pretty staggering numbers.

Results: Overall the proactive, strategic, relationship building approach spearheaded by Layne at Plantronics has saved the company over $1.3 million in agency placement fees, and has saved more than 4 months of recruiter productivity in a year. The time to present qualified candidates and the time to fill have reduced substantially, but most importantly the hiring manager feedback about candidate quality and hiring process is glowing. And not only does Plantronics focus their data collection and metrics internally, Layne and team have surveyed more than 4,000 candidates that have applied at Plantronics about their experience, receiving very positive feedback and have used the feedback to continue to refine the total candidate experience.

For their efforts, Plantronics has been named a finalist in the ERE recruting awards for Best Use of Recruitment Technology. The winner will be announced at ERE West in late-March.

Layne truly is breaking new ground every day at Plantronics, and their talenteering results and corporate growth reflect it. Layne turly has stepped beyond recruiting and into talenteering, and I'm proud to say he is a Hire.com customer!

Pushin' Talent

Doug invited me as a guest writer...oops, he forgot to give me rules! He did tell me to write On Talent, so I will.

I got this great CD and...

But before I go there...I have this ritual I follow twice a month that helps me retain a little sanity while expanding the horizon (doesn't take much). My ritual takes me to Waterloo Records...my place for seeing, touching and listening to music. Music old, music new - music. Afterall, as we like to say the greatest Human Resource in Austin are our musicians.

Waterloo has 'in store' live music on afternoons, great listening rooms and an educated staff that is very helpful just don't ask dumb questions. I bet most have the CD place in your hometown ...kinda nice to visit, touch and listen in this age of new media distribution models. I want both.

To the talent. I got this great CD Por Vida - A Tribute to the songs of Alejandro Escovedo

Alejandro has been a part of Austin for a long time. A talent some of us have takent advantage of - we shouldn't. Take a look and listen - full of talent about a great talent - at least in my mind.

You got great music? Share!

Next time Doug - give me the rules! then I'll break them!

Hank

Developing Talent

Kudos to my good friend Kevin Wheeler. If you don't know Kevin, he's the professorial type who has been a leader in our space for a while. He writes, he teaches - preaches and he does. I'm envious of the guy because he speaks in Italy, Australia and New Zealand every year....he gets it done.

More importantly he has something to say. His main theme for the past few years has been On developing Talent. He uses his firm Global Learning Resources as his platform and teaches at San Fransisco State. And in the past month Kevin and colleague Eileen Clegg have released the proverbial workbook on creating your own Corporate University. "The Corporate University Workbook - Launching the 21st Century Learning Organization" is a comprehensive system on creating your on function to develop talent.

Here's the description from his website...

The Corporate University Workbook gives you everything you need to create an effective, systematic learning infrastructure within your organization. As a result, you will develop employees who are capable of adapting to rapid changes and who deliver the results your business needs! This resource offers a dynamic combination of practical methodology, best practices, and step-by-step guidance. The Workbook, along with the CD-ROM, are filled with the tools, templates, and activities you need to develop and implement a corporate university.
CLICK HERE to order your copy now!

Take a look and pass along. When we consider that quality talent is tougher to find (let Capelli and Wheeler argue this one...bottom line: competition has increased) and that our companies require the right talent at the right time -successful companies are already or will soon develop there own. Want to get ahead? Get the book!

Hank

Thanks

Many thanks to John Sumser, Jason Davis, and Michael Pollack for their posts about the launch of On Talent. I have been a blog reader for a while now, but having only recently plunged into creating one, it is nice to get a welcome to the blogoshpere from bloggers that I regularly read and respect. I only hope I can do as good a job with my blog as they all do, and I hope you enjoy following and participating in On Talent.

More Cluetrain Wisdom

In my Monday post I mentioned that I had dragged out my old copy of Cluetrain over the weekend and had reviewed the 95 theses. I also mentioned that I was amazed at how many of these theses apply to the talent "market" as well. Monday I pointed out theses 1 through 5--markets are conversations not monologues.

Today I want to point out another Cluetrain thesis that is more true now than when it was written:

12. There are no secrets. The networked market knows more than companies do about their own products. And whether the news is good or bad, they tell everyone.

This is also very true of talent markets. I was visiting with one of our customers earlier this week and they talked about how the top candidates they were bringing in were so well prepared, that in many cases they were intimidating hiring managers with how much they knew about the company, its financial condition, its products strategies, and its warts. They were able to ask hard questions about topics that in many cases the interviewing team and the hiring manager had no knowledge whatsoever.

This is the age of information accessibility. With Google, Spoke, LinkedIn, Eliyon, and so many other ways to find not only information, but people who have information, any candidate interested in whether they are really finding a great place to work can easily obtain it. Good talenteers will also try to stay ahead of this curve and provide answers to the candidates, straightforward truthful answers so the candidate will get a feeling for the real company and how it responds to hard questions.

Participate in the conversation. When you've done a great job of finding the top talent through creative sourcing, don't lose them because of a bad recruiting experience. Talenteering is selling--be ready, and have the whole team ready to handle objections.

Cluetrain: Renewing the Theses

I've been almost obsessed recently with reading manifestos published at ChangeThis. There are a bunch of them about a lot of different topics. A very intriguing one is Hughtrain, somewhat of a takeoff on the popular book from a few years ago The Cluetrain Manifesto. Hughtrain is largely about how branding and advertising have to change in the "new" economy. (WARNING: Read it, it makes some great points that apply as well to employment branding, but the language and tone are, well, blunt.)

After reading Hughtrain, I was inspired to drag out my old copy of Cluetrain last weekend. When I read this book a couple of years ago I thought it was very provocative--now I think it is prophetic! I will be referencing a few of the Cluetrain theses over a few posts. But I'm going to start with 1 through 5:

1. Markets are conversations.
2. Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.
3. Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.
4. Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives, dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is typically open, natural, uncontrived.
5. People recognize each other as such from the sound of this voice.

Some of the points that I have made in previous posts about talenteering being about relationship building are SOOOO emphasized by these 5 theses. Employment brands cannot be sterile representations of a company--they have to be living, breathing, value-based representations of the company stated in straight-forward, natural, human language. Talent relationships are--exactly as Cluetrain calls them--conversations. And as I have pointed out in previous posts, the more personalized the conversation, the more recognizable it will be to the candidate.

So what's my point in all of this? It's time to adopt a talenteering mentality. Speak to each candidate market in terms they recognize and can relate to. Make the message conversational and in a tone and level that represents what your company could be for them--and not in a contrived and fake voice. Top talent is attracted to opportunities where they believe they are a good fit, their skills will be valued, where they have an opportunity to be challenged, and where they can increase their own personal value proposition. They will sense that through meaningful conversation with you. And just because it is called a conversation doesn't mean it has to be "1-on-1." The conversation is about listening to what the market (in this case talent pool) says, understanding that it is  living, breathing, and real, and using language and communications vehicles that are real, human, and relevant to what they care about.

Become a talenteer. Adopt a conversational style. Be proactive. Develop relationships.

The Second Worse Thing

I once heard someone say the second worse thing you can do to a hiring manager is to present them with a stack of unqualified resumes. The worst is to track their hiring stats on those candidates. One of the problems I often hear from recruiters and sourcers at prospective customer companies is that they are "caught in the middle." The middle between candidate traffic and hiring manager satisfaction. It seems that the current state of sourcing automation--job boards--is how most company recruiters generate candidates for open positions today. They are barraged with resumes, many of whom aren't really qualified. But the recruiters I talk to are managing 50, 70, I've even heard 100 open positions. So they don't really have the time to appropriately screen the candidates. So in most cases they are passed directly to the hiring manager. (And I can't say I blame them--if I had 70 open positions and was being asked to support 10 to 20 hiring managers I'd be doing the same thing.)

A better approach? Use automation to make the recruiter's job more effective--not harder. By using the career website as the common collection point--regardless of source--a talent pool can be developed for filling a current position as well as future ones. Using candidate self-screening technology will allow the recruiter to establish minimum advertised job criteria to be used as a candidate filter. By taking this step--the applicant traffic can be substantially reduced and the candidates that are screened-in will be qualified. A smart recruiter who works with the hiring manager to develop the screening questions will be sending the hiring manager candidates that meet their first level cut. The recruiter might not even have to touch the candidate initially--they could be routed directly to the hiring manager for feedback on whether to proceed or not. Hiring manager satisfaction will increase.

The talenteer approach to the same problem is to have the pool of candidates from a variety of sources available before the job opens. Then using automated notification to let interesting (matching) candidates know about the position, then use screening to determine their fit. This approach should allow for delivery of qualified applicants to hiring managers in hours or days, instead of weeks. Learn how to use automation to become more effective.

Recruiter-ese: Marketing Opportunities

As I've mentioned in previous posts, I'm a marketing guy so I read a lot of marketing blogs. I've also always been a marketer who has been "out of the box." Some of this has been necessity (I've worked for at least 8 startups--lost count somewhere along the line) and some is style--that's just who I am. But one thing I continue to point out is now that I'm marketing for a recruiting automation software company (Hire.com), it continues to amaze me at how much of good recruiting follows the same principles of good sales and marketing (so you might think about reading some of those blogs too--I'll be referencing them often).

One of the marketing blogs that I read daily is smallbusinessbranding.  Its author, Michael Pollock, has created a small business branding manifesto . If you're a recruiter--read it.  More than half (possibly all) of the points Michael makes in this manifesto apply directly to recruiting. Loosely paraphrased, these are some of the high runners. Forget acquiring candidates--create an inclusive network. Forget traditional recruiting--think conversations. Forget control--it's an illusion. Forget selling--think connect. Forget professionalism--think humanism.

These concepts are what recruiting (and marketing) are all about. Here are some things you can do now:

1. Make an emotional connection--read personalize your communications. If you are looking for sales reps, create a message and proposition that tells the story in sales-ese of why a sales person should want to work there. Engineers--engineer-ese. Accountants--accountant-ese. Don't just post a job and wait.
2. Talenteering is not acquisition--it is attraction. Widgets and office supplies get acquired. Talent is attracted through a process of relationship building and sharing of relevant information (I think that's a conversation--see 3 below). Create an experience that supports this concept. This is the heart of building an employment brand--it's not the logos and colors and taglines, it is the total candidate experience created by building a personalized relationship. (Nice combination of 1 & 2 eh?)
3. Start a conversation. You can do some of it electronically. Create a personalized career portal. Create a recruiting blog, it's working well for others. Create live chat. Pick up the phone. Meet the candidate for coffee. Allow a conversation to happen. This is an absolute must for passive and semi-passive recruiting.
4. The candidate is control. You can automate your processes 'til the cows come home, but the good candidates will always be in control of the process. The timeline will be theirs, the information they want will be theirs, the people they talk to, etc. Support it, and make it easy for them to be in control.

Stop recruiting--start talenteering. Spend at least some portion of your day (even if it's only a half hour) doing something new that you haven't been doing to get more proactive.

Catch 'Em While You Can

I've been reading John Sumser's posts today, yesterday, and the day before about corporate websites. John is reaffirming something that we have believed for a long time--the number one career site on the Internet is your own. The numbers are staggering in terms of people who start at job boards that read about other jobs and gather corporate information while they are there--north of 90%! But think about the other HUGE attraction of a corporate career site, capturing interested candidates who came to your website because they were interested in your company, not because they came from a job board.

This is an ideal opportunity to tap into the semi-passive candidates. The ones that have a job, are happy with it, but are open to new opportunities. They  even surf around occasionally to see what's out there. These visitors to your website are the ones that probably already work in your industry, or for the competitors you are targeting with your recruiting efforts. This is where I believe most career sites fall short--they are just job listings. They don't compel the candidate by presenting your company as what Tom Peters calls a Great Place To Work (GPTW). Sumser talks about the website through its metaphors: the lobby, the gateway, the source, and the opportunity. Right on!

Yes I'm biased, but check out Hire Careers. It has a great page on culture, the work environment, and the benefits. Every career path has a separate portal with direct information in video from the department head. There is an employee spotlight, rotated monthly, where an employee blogs about their experience here. And of course there is a career site powering registration, information collection, job viewing and submission, and screening.

How many companies are missing the boat by not providing specifically tailored messages for mission-critical talent? If you are looking for engineers, create an engineer portal and blog. Sales reps should have a sales rep portal. Software engineers should have a technology portal--etcetera.

This is how relationships get built and nurtured. Provide information that candidates can use to assess why your company is a GPTW, and why the opportunity you are presenting is right (or not) for them. You'll be casting a wider net by not just presenting the career site in the light of active candidates, and the candidates will be getting relevant information. Talenteering is not about posting jobs and reviewing resumes, it is about being proactive and building relationships with the right kind of candidates in advance of openings!