It Starts With a Job Description

The hiring process usually starts with a job description. Sadly of the type that is a list of corporate-speak duties, deliverables and requirements.

Most searches start with the job description of the last incumbent or, worse still, someone’s view of what the new person ought to be doing and the competencies they should have. It also usually starts with structure and a title and a mission to find someone already doing it.

It should start with a need and no structure or title. An opportunity to help a team perform better, the business to be in a better position to reach it’s objectives, or to be more compliant.

It starts with something that has to be done, and the accompanying ‘job description‘ should be a blank canvas or page – ready for a picture, or story, that gives colour, purpose and context to the role.

Then it needs that colour, purpose and context.

But before you paint or write, look at whether you need someone new at all.

Is there someone already in the organisation who has the skills, capabilities or potential to do this? Who could thrive if you showed faith in them or gave them some training to help development.

Maybe you need to look outside the organisation. Then think about who you know – personal and business networks and who they know, employees and who they know, alumni and who they know, partners, collaborators, suppliers and customers. And who they know too.

Then paint your picture or tell your story and let people share it. Make sure anyone seeing it gets a clear vision of your culture, scope and purpose, how the role makes a contribution and how valuable this is. Forget the duties and personal characteristics and bring the context to life.

There are many reasons why people seek a new role – lack of opportunity, lack of trust, not feeling valued, current opportunity not matching expectation, boredom, and inability to use skills are usually the main ones. If you are looking for someone new then to get the best out of them there’s little point in offering more of the same.

Candidates seldom want a checklist…they want an opportunity to be a part of something. Give them one. Paint that blank canvas…

Social Recruiting…What’s in a Name?

Last week I took part in the latest episode of Voice America’s internet radio show HR Trends with Game-Changers Radio. I was joined by Will Staney from SAP in the US and fellow UK based social recruiting commentator and trainer Katrina Collier.

You can listen to the show by clicking on this image…

It was an interesting conversation. I’ve been talking about the use of social media within the recruitment process for a few years now but here I was addressing an audience who may not have much knowledge of it. It’s often easy in the day to day Twitter echo chamber to assume that everyone knows this stuff, but even our host had checked out what Wikipedia had to say about the subject.

At the very end we had to offer a prediction on what we would say in 5 years time about social recruiting – would we still be talking about it or would we have shelved the concept in favour of a return to traditional recruiting.

Except, of course, traditional recruiting would probably mean advertising on job boards (or their 2020 equivalent) and searching CV databases – two things that 15 years ago were the future and were never expected to replace the phone, rolodex, fax and print media.

As a society we often get hung up on new technologies and try to see them as fads and fashions. Something that’s new unsettles us, makes us feel that we have to adapt to something out of our comfort zone – something that other people will do better than us and therefore may be more successful at. Which is why we focus on the methods and not the outcomes – hence social recruiting becomes about Twitter and Facebook and not recruiting. As I’ve said before, we no longer talk about internet recruitment or telephone recruitment.

Here are a few of the points I made:

Social recruiting is about the recruiting. It starts with a hiring need and a properly scoped job description. If you don’t get the recruitment process right then whichever platform you use will be immaterial.
Or put another way, if your recruiting processes suck they’ll suck louder and harder on social channels (I didn’t quite word it that way on the show)
It’s not about volume, be it noise or the amount of words, but about having the right conversation at the right time in the right place.
Put yourself in the job seekers’ shoes and ask why and how they are using those channels, and why they would reach out to you
You won’t successfully recruit someone through social channels if you’re not a social business. It’s not a trick to try out, it’s a window and spotlight on your culture.
Content should be about telling your story and giving people a compelling reason to want to be part of it. No-one is interested in how wonderful you think you are, nor how many awards you’ve won, unless said awards give a clear indication of the employee experience they can expect if they join you.
Manage everyone’s expectations as to what they can expect from the hiring process. If they are using public social channels to find you then they will almost certainly also use them to let everyone know how bad their experience was.
LinkedIn is not a social media channel. It’s a content sharing platform. Use it that way instead of as a direct access mechanism to someone you don’t know.

Katrina and Will said lots of interesting things too so make sure you listen to the show – you can even download it from iTunes and listen to it on your way to work!

3 Things Millennials Need to Know About Their Bosses

First off…Congratulations! It’s not easy getting hired in this market but well done for showing the skills, capabilities and attitude that an employer was looking for. You can now look forward to start paying off some of that student debt and getting so good at your chosen career that you’ll be able to go freelance in no time.

Now for the first few days in a proper job – very different from the ones that you did to earn some beer and rent money whilst you were studying – and your first proper, corporate boss.

There’s no need to worry though. There are 3 things you need to know about them…

They’ve read a whitepaper/study/report on what you’re like and how they should manage you. They may even have had a day rate consultant come in and educate them on it.
The report has told them that you’re a digital native, have a sense of entitlement, get bored easily, want to spend all day on Facebook and whatsapp, don’t intend to stay with them very long and would much prefer to work the hours that suit you than a regular 9 to 5.
They have kids, or have friends who have kids, who are similar in age to you so they really do know even more about you than the report could tell them.

Your relationship with your boss is important so you need to get off on the right footing. You don’t want to disappoint them or fail to meet their expectations so I suggest the following…

Turn up about 10 minutes late on your first morning and make sure that you’re holding a takeaway coffee cup – not from a high street brand. When you meet your boss for the first time just say ‘Hey, didn’t realise it was going to be so difficult to get a decent cup of coffee round here‘
At some stage you’ll be given a tour of the office. Towards the end of the tour be sure to ask where the ping pong table is. If they’ve got one then ask where the pool table is. If they’ve also got one of those then you’ve actually done quite well so quickly move on to point 3. Unless they haven’t got any bean bags, in which case ask where yours is.
Once the tour is finished you’ll probably be shown to a desk, work station or open space and given a laptop. Remember to look at the laptop you’re given and tell them that you can only work on an Apple machine. If they’ve given you one then make it known that you can only produce your best work on a top of the range iMac.
Once you’re logged in and ready to go make sure you spend the first hour updating your social profiles and sending Facebook friend invites to everyone in your team. Also follow them all on Twitter and be sure to connect with your boss on LinkedIn and ask them for a recommendation.
When you get ready to leave at the end of the first day tell your boss that you’re going out with a few college mates to celebrate your new job and ask if it would it be OK if you work from home tomorrow.

Your boss may pull a strange face but remember that they’ve almost certainly spent a lot of money on the whitepaper/study/report/consultant and it’s your duty to make sure that their money isn’t wasted.

Don’t worry that you might be giving the impression that you’re not serious about a career there – the report would have almost certainly told them that 80% of your age group want to work for themselves anyway…

(image via Midland University)

Talking Game Changing Social Recruiting on #SAPRadio

I’ve not been on internet radio a lot. I have graced HR Happy Hour a couple of times and co-hosted it, whilst my session on Drive Thru HR is in the Top 50 of their most listened to broadcasts.

So it’s time to give the vocal chords another airing!

Tomorrow, Tuesday 8th April at 4pm (GMT) sees my first appearance on HR Trends – Coffee Break with Game-Changers which is hosted by the charismatic Bonnie G Graham on behalf of SAP. I’ll be joined by Will Staney, Director of Recruiting and Strategic Programs at SuccessFactors, and my friend and social media trainer Katrina Collier, who will no doubt be flying the flag for Australia as well as the UK!

The topic for discussion is ‘Social Recruiting : Art or Science’ and here’s the scene setter

“Gone is the era of your HR manager hoping hard-to-find talent would stumble upon their business-critical job postings. Today, millions of job candidates eagerly post their credentials on social media sites. Is successful social recruiting for top talent an art or a science for today’s HR?”

We’ve each already shared a conversation opener:

Will : “Social media is not necessarily a source of hire, it’s a communication channel. It’s important to remember this when measuring an ROI of your social recruiting efforts”

Katrina : “Finding people on social channels is easy. Getting a response is a different matter and that’s the art. If you ignore or mistreat social job seekers you’ll miss hiring great people”

Me : “Social recruiting is just recruiting. Forget the word ‘social’. Get the hiring process right then ‘social’ becomes no different to ”telephone’ or ‘internet'”

You can read more about the show here and you can follow/join the Twitter debate at #SAPRadio

Hope you can tune in…but don’t worry if you miss it live, as it will be available to download on iTunes later…

…and I expect to see you all download it so we can try and give Will.I.am a run for his money 😉

Froth Free HR

There’s been some banter on the HR twitter timeline recently about coffee shops. It started when myself, Michael, Emma and Anne were sharing the worst misspelling of our names (mine was Murvy) on cups from a certain chain that tries to personalise the experience. We’ve joked about trying to set up an HR Coffee Shop.

Fairly typical early morning Twitter banter but today Emma shared the above picture from coffee art and the chat turned to froth. I said that there should be no froth in the conversations at the HR Coffee Shop.

Around the same time Neil’s latest blog popped up in the timeline about big data vs big thinking and whether the rush for HR to understand and use analytics was an act of cowardice, an avoidance of dealing with some of the more pressing, creative issues by hiding behind numbers.

When a serious post meets a bit of fun banter on social media a there’s usually an interesting point to be made and it’s this…

…..to many a lot of HR’s work and concerns are seen as froth. I don’t for one minute believe they are, but many people out there do. As someone who is not a practitioner but is closely tied to the profession I hear it a lot, especially from people who aren’t (and unlikely any time soon to be) part of the Social HR echo chamber.

Recently I was lucky enough to be invited to an espresso tasting at Nespresso’s London boutique. There’s a thin layer of froth on the top of a new espresso which you push to one side to taste the real coffee.

So whatever’s on your agenda today, this week or this month – push away the froth.

Smell the real coffee and make sure everyone else does too…

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