Month: November 2010

Is ‘Commission’ Becoming a Dirty Word?

‘We don’t work for commission, we work for you’

Walking through my local branch of the UKs largest electrical retailer you couldn’t escape that statement. It was printed on every price tag and every poster.

Flip this and you may think that if they worked for commission then they wouldn’t be working in your best interests.

Cross the road and enter one of the UKs largest mobile phone retailers. In their literature you’ll read…

‘This year we also made a big change to our Retail Reward Scheme; we scrapped our commission-based pay structure and introduced our new pay deal, which encourages better team-working, and more emphasis on providing great customer service’

Flip this and you may think that working on a commission-based pay structure does not encourage team working and an emphasis on greater customer service.

I’ve also noticed a growing tendency for financial services businesses to start advertising the fact that their staff do not receive commission…

…and I have sat in many client presentations where the fact that I was not remunerated by commission has been a big positive for the client.

Regular readers of this blog will know I believe that rewarding purely for sales achievements as opposed to providing a great service and experience has driven poor practices and behaviours in the recruitment industry.

Now it would appear that leading businesses in other sectors may be thinking about how commission based rewards affect behaviours…and seeing a no commission approach as giving them a competitive advantage.

So is ‘commission’ becoming a dirty word?

How can you provide an impartial, collaborative, customer centric service whilst incentivising individuals with commission?

Does a no commission policy give you a competitive advantage?

Let me know what you think…

Money For Old Rope??

“How can recruiters find candidates that the corporates can’t find themselves?”

That tweet caught my eye yesterday. I think it emanated from a TruAmsterdam chat, I don’t know who said it or the context but it stood out and really got me thinking…Why ask that now??

Why haven’t recruiters been asking this kind of question for years?

Surely that’s what recruiters should always do…find talent that clients can’t find for themselves.

The flipside of this would be to say that recruiters are too used to offering clients a route to market that the client could use themselves. Which is of course mainly true.

Job board advertising, CV databases…all very well, but why?? Surely a client has always been able to utilise those for themselves?

Unfortunately it’s been too easy for too long for most 3rd party recruiters…take a brief, advertise the role, wait for response, blow the dust off a few database CVs…and charge a fee.

Money for old rope? Harsh, but looking at it from a client’s viewpoint you may ask where the value is.

Having said that, clients themselves have often been complicit in allowing this to happen, but the times they are a-changing…

Clients are doing it for themselves

Recruiters are now trying to use LinkedIn more, but guess what…they’ve missed the boat! Clients are already starting to use it…and LinkedIn themselves are offering functionality and capabilities that are ONLY for the corporate market. A corporate recruiter will now probably be able to find a much stronger shortlist than a third party using LinkedIn.

Barely a day passes without another blog or article criticising the attitudes and behaviours of 3rd party recruiters, and you can’t deny that we often give them an easy target.

In the last couple of days we’ve had ’12 Lies Recruiters Like to Tell’ by Christine Livingston and ‘I Strongly Dislike Recruiters’ by Veronica Ludwig. There was also had a long piece in Recruiter Magazine which further drove a wedge between agency and in-house recruiters, painting them as two tribes with different views, attitudes, aims and rewards. My colleague Andy Young responded to that with the excellent ‘It’s not WHERE you work, it’s HOW’

We seem to be here on a weekly basis. I wrote recently about the sales model and how it was responsible for so many of the behaviours that annoy clients and candidates and had the usual range of responses from believers and deniers.

In reality there seems to be a real ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ attitude and unfortunately the measure of ‘broke’ isn’t customer satisfaction but bank balances.

The belief seems that it makes money, and if it makes money it must be right. New offerings, which are invariably old offerings with new price models, are aimed at cost and speed, not really with providing a better or different experience or building long term relationships.

There seems little appetite for re-invention. We hear talk of communities, talent pools & puddles, social sourcing, but ultimately most 3rd party recruiters are remunerated and incentivised to place as many people as possible, whilst their employers look for the cheapest, quickest routes to market.

So what are we really doing that’s different?

What do most 3rd party recruiters offer clients that they couldn’t do for themselves?

How are we adding VALUE?

Let me know your thoughts.

Blogs mentioned above:

It’s not WHERE you work, it’s HOW

12 Lies Recruiters Like to Tell

I Strongly Dislike Recruiters

Making the Switch

When Sorry Seems To Be The Easiest Word

I was on the receiving end of some poor customer experience at the weekend. The word ‘sorry’ was used, but in such a gratuitous, throwaway manner that it actually made the experience worse.

And having had many debates around the candidate experience within recruitment I was interested to see the parallels with other commercial sectors.

My conclusion, not unsurprisingly, was…bad experience sucks! However it’s delivered, a bad experience makes you want to shout and scream, tell everyone you know about it, and never use that business again.

And ‘sorry’ is a word that is often rendered meaningless by the way it’s delivered.

Here’s what happened. It was a simple, everyday shopping situation…

1)      Went in to a local branch of a major bookstore to buy a specific greeting card from a range I had been looking at the day before.

2)      Range wasn’t there. Was told that the range had not sold well so had been moved to stock to be replaced by another range. Asked if someone could go to stock and get me the one I wanted and was told that no-one could.

3)      Chose a different card and joined a queue (in third place) to pay.

4)      Two more joined behind me prompting a second sales person to come over and help out (wearing a t-shirt saying ‘Christmas Helper’). This sales person started serving from the back of the queue, ignoring the people who had been waiting the longest.

5)      When it was pointed out that she had ignored the people waiting the longest she said, without even turning to look properly at us…

Sorry, I didn’t see you there

(not sure what their training is, but if she missed a queue of five people I suggest that she’s not cut out for this line of work)

6)      To make things worse, when I did get served I was given the wrong change. The till had been closed so I had to wait until the ‘Christmas Helper’ had finished a long transaction at the other till before getting my correct change. I told her of my frustrations and she said…

I’ve already said sorry, what more do you want

7)      I replied…

A gratuitous ‘sorry’ doesn’t make a bad experience better

So next time a candidate applies for a role and…

–          The role has already been filled, or pulled, or put on hold, or never existed

–          The CV isn’t a good match

–          The candidate has made attempts to get you and not heard back…

–          …or keeps applying and no-one tells them that they are unsuitable

Then an auto e-mail saying thank you for your CV, if you don’t hear from us within 14 days you can assume that you are unsuitable for the position is very frustrating and not very informative…

…a message ignored is disrespectful

…and a

‘sorry, what’s your name? I can’t seem to find you here can you send it in again’

…is a very bad experience.

As I said before, bad experience sucks…and every person who interacts with your business and goes away with a negative impression is someone who may well shout and scream, and tell everyone about it.

What are you doing to make sure that all your customers, clients and candidates are having a good experience??

 

It’s a Beautiful Noise…

I was watching a documentary about Neil Diamond on Saturday night and he was talking about his song Beautiful Noise, and how the idea came from his daughter listening to a parade and hearing all the different music which merged together to form a beautiful sound.

This resonated with me, as earlier that day I had been reading some really strong posts from new bloggers, and was really impressed with the way so many of the new bloggers, from different backgrounds and viewpoints, were reaching out and really making a difference, writing some interesting and thought provoking stuff.

We talk about white noise on social media, but when people dig deep and make this kind of effort to give us a different insight into our day to day interactions, then this is really a Beautiful Noise.

There were three people in particular that made a difference to me this weekend and I think they all deserve a big mention and a wider audience. Each one shines a different light on the power of social media and how it can be used to inform and transform.

Firstly, Alison Chisnell. She is an HR Director who came along to the ConnectingHR unconference and was clearly bitten by the social media bug. She has been a willing participant in the ConnectingHR community and is there for our weekly #chrchat. On Friday she posted about her efforts to get her company interested in using social media for communication. Not only did she write this on her blog, but she then posted the Pecha Kucha presentation that she used.

Wow! No nerves, no trepidation, just reaching out to the community with her thoughts and ideas. Jumping in and being part of the conversation.

HR professionals in the UK have tended to be slow adopters of social media, but with ambassadors like Alison I am convinced that the conversion will be quicker.

The second blog that really hit home was from @recruitgal – she is a UK Recruitment Manager with a major global brand and a new blogger. What did she write about? How not to do Cold Calls. A really informative and entertaining blog, and as a third party recruiter this is a great resource. Clearly she is frustrated by some of the approaches that she gets.

A potential client contact telling us how not to approach her. What more could you want? How else could you have got this information? I know that recruiters are not exactly welcoming of potential clients telling them what’s wrong with the industry, but seriously…how can you argue with an in-house recruitment manager telling you how not to try and do business with her. The blog is there…available through social media…no need to cold call to try and get a conversation.

Finally, and most heart warmingly, my friend Sarah Knight. Some of you may already be aware of her quest to climb Mount Kilimanjaro and raise money for a very worthy charity. Some may have even seen another UK HR blogger use his own blog to help raise £1000 in sponsorship for her…and have also read her blog of thanks. For me, her story epitomises everything that is good about social media connections, and how the willingness to engage and share goes way beyond trying to sell your latest product or service.

I have now met her twice socially, and spoken to her on the phone a few times. I didn’t know her before we connected on Twitter, yet there is little doubt that we are now ‘friends’. I encouraged her to start blogging about her quest, have offered my support when things were getting tough, and we are both part of a small Twitter community of people who have pulled together to encourage and inspire her.

So here’s my beautiful noise for this week…

Alison Chisnell – read about how she has tried to transform her company’s attitude towards social media – Practical ideas for becoming more social…and keeping it simple – and watch the presentation that she used – HR becoming social

Katie McNab ( @Recruitgal ) – find out what does and doesn’t work when you are trying to sell to a recruitment manager form a global brand – A cold calling masterclass…how not to do it

Sarah Knight – see how social media really works…if you work with someone who thinks it’s for geeks and nerds then get them to read it too – @theHRD…I thank you

Hope you enjoy reading them…let me know who’s making a beautiful noise for you this week?

I’m a Dude, Yeah!

Now I do like a challenge. There I was trying to pen a belated birthday post – the blog’s birthday, not mine – when I read Kevin Grossman’s Rocking Carnival of HR challenge!

How to combine the two? Easy!

Bloggers rock! Oh, they so do! Bloggers are rockstars, and we need more. All companies should have bloggers too.

Blogging is a way to share and learn, inform and inspire.

Let’s face it, more and more of us are now getting our fix of news and views from blogs…and more and more of us are putting our thoughts and ideas into blogs. Very few of us are trained writers or journalists, but we have a passion and interest that we want to share. A great blog really can inspire debate and get you thinking.

And where’s the music angle? Well regular followers of T Recs will know that David Bowie is one of my all time favourite rock stars…and there’s a clue in one of his songs…

“All The Young Dudes/Carry The News/Boogaloo Dudes/Carry The News”

Oh yes! Bowie’s apocalyptic song envisaged a dying world, with only five years left. (The track was originally written for the Ziggy Stardust album). No need for entertainment hence no need for musicians…they were left to ‘carry the news’ not unlike the wandering minstrels of medieval England, moving from town to town telling people what was happening.

How does this relate to blogging, I hear you ask??

I see bloggers, be they concerned with politics or economics, entertainment or culture, daily routines or grand schemes…or HR and Recruiting…to be the Young Dudes! The world (thankfully) really has a bit longer than 5 years to go…but I’m not sure print media has. Its online bloggers who will increasingly help spread the news, insight and new thinking.

So plug in that guitar…get ready for that opening riff…I’m a Dude, Yeah!

Wide Awake at truNORA

There’s a rumour going around the Twitterverse that I dozed off during truNORA on Thursday. It’s complete nonsense I can assure you.

Flicking through the excellent set of images that Sara Headworth has produced you may see one of those photographic moments where a mixture of light, angle and shutter speed combine to give a false impression…proof that the camera can easily lie.

The offending picture was actually taken during a track that I was co-leading about the candidate experience…there was plenty of debate there to ensure that I didn’t doze off.

I’ll start my thoughts of the day with the candidate experience track as it’s the second candidate experience track that I have co-led at a tru event this year, and it’s a subject that has filled blogs, comments and numerous conversations, both online and offline.

This conversation was similar to the last, in that it featured a mix of representatives from job boards and seasoned (cough, experienced!) recruiters and my conclusions are the same.

Candidate experience is a state of mind not something you should have to think about doing. Automated acknowledgements, no matter how personally written, are not an experience. They should be an absolute minimum expectation as a matter of respect and service and should be followed up by a more personal interaction. Personally I think 3rd party recruiters get too involved in conversations around job board functionality. The experience that matters to the candidate is the one that happens after they have applied, and is most probably important to the candidate whose application is unsuccessful.

Interestingly the recruiters who talked most of the importance of personal contact in this process, of candidates becoming clients and ambassadors for your service, were the most experienced recruiters, those who have been around for 20 years or more…maybe the candidate experience really is just good recruiting habit. In which case shame on the industry for turning its back on it recent years.

I heard a lot about Linked In too, and have to say that each improvement and enhancement to functionality seems to signal another nail in the coffin of traditional 3rd party niche permanent recruiters. Just my opinion, I know, but the industry really does have to come up with a value proposition and offering that does not include something that a client can do for themselves. Posting on job boards and searching on LinkedIn are both routes to market that a well connected hiring director has available directly…we should be able to offer something more that justifies our fee. Most new LI tools are aimed at clients, not at recruiters, which I fear could well lead to a client being able to put together a stronger shortlist than a recruiter unless we look seriously at what we can offer.

With recruiters slow on the LI uptake, it was even more interesting to hear employKyle talk of his age group’s indifference to the platform. Recruiters should be ahead of the curve, not playing catch up…which is why we need to be on top of how the next generation workforce will communicate and engage.

I really enjoyed hearing about Hard Rock and what they do. Loved the Authenticity – Lifestyle – Purpose approach to engagement and believe it is something that all companies should aspire to. I have long thought that trusting your staff, and enabling them see a wider purpose to their role and your business, is key to getting the best out of them. Companies have nothing to fear from social media if they have an engaged, collaborative workforce. If you fear your people will use social media to portray a negative image for your business then your problem is not social media…its much closer to home.

All in all another interesting, thought provoking day offering the chance to chat and debate with old friends and new faces…

…and certainly no time for napping!

 

 

 

 

 

Keeping It Real

What is it with some people and optimism? I mean, it’s nice to be optimistic sometimes…I always believe my team are going to win, am certain that my son will deliver good grades in his exams, and hope upon hope that Santa will bring me a new iPod.

But I pretty much know that the economy isn’t going into overdrive any time soon.

I wrote a blog nearly a year ago called Optimistic Recruiters Don’t Create Jobs. It was true then and it’s true now. For the record:

Growing companies create jobs.

Companies grow when demand for their goods and services grow.

Companies hire when their capacity to fulfil the growth in demand is limited by manpower.

This is fairly basic stuff but you would be surprised how many people seem to think that if we think everything is going to be alright then it will be. I can accept that there are one or two exceptions, that in a GROWING economy some firms will forward hire in anticipation of future demand either in existing or new markets.

But now isn’t one of those times.

There was a bit of a fuss this morning with a CIPD press release forecasting that there could be as many as 1.6m extra job losses in the UK over the next 5 years. The belief is that these will be covered by new jobs created by the private sector…yet to do that would require a level of consistent growth in the UK economy that it is nowhere near achieving any time in the near future. The CIPDs economist – a man I have a lot of time for, and one who has been right a number of times in recent years – was speaking to the Treasury select committee and that was what he was going to advise. Let’s not forget that there are already 2.5m claiming jobseekers allowance (many more inactives not claiming too).

So what was being said here is that total unemployment COULD rise to 4m (almost certainly will be 3m+ it seems) and the very best we can hope for in terms of new jobs is 1.8m, but that the circumstances needed for those 1.8m to be created are not yet in place.

Shouldn’t have really been a shock to anyone. Certainly not a shock to anyone working in recruitment and HR, for whom you may have thought this was a quite relevant viewpoint. It should highlight a big cause for concern.

It is an economist’s view; one heavily involved in our industry, and as such I would have thought of interest to us.

But the problem seemed to be that it was a negative message. It prompted some angry tweeting and blogging, including this rant by Andy Headworth.

People seem to want optimism. Had the press release said that lots of new jobs were about to be created, maybe it would have been more acceptable.

Why? Because if we believe that the jobs are coming then they will come? Is this the CIPDs fault?

We will be getting new figures from the REC on recruitment activity soon…if the figures aren’t good will it be the RECs fault? (It won’t be down to them if the figures are good!)

All of this makes me think of the Stockdale Paradox. Written about in the book Good To Great, it refers to an American Captain in the Vietnam war who became a prisoner of war. On his coping strategy he said:

“I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade.”

In answer to the question ‘Who were the people who didn’t make it’ he said

“Oh, that’s easy, the optimists. Oh, they were the ones who said, ‘We’re going to be out by Christmas.’ And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they’d say, ‘We’re going to be out by Easter.’ And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart.”

If you’re reading this blog there is a strong chance that you are a someone  who is advising or helping people in their careers and job searches.

I would have thought a bit of realism would go down well, a valuable part of helping people.

Apparently not.

Clearly I don’t believe optimism is good for business and I don’t believe that it is good for our candidates and clients. I do believe that we need to be honest and truthful and deal with things as they are.

So I’m throwing down a challenge.

Tell me why you think I’m wrong. Why is it better to be optimistic, even though it is may be completely unfounded? Are we in danger of leading those who rely on us in to the disappointment?

Surely we all want to be the Stockdales, coming out the other side….