The HR Executive Conference - Day 1

The first day of the Senior HR Executive Conference was a fascinating day of presentations, discussion, and a real inside look at some of the HR practices in some of the world's largest companies.

HR Executives from Coca-Cola, Unilever, HP, FedEx and Chiquita Brands were just some of the organizations sharing their insights for a group of about 100 Senior HR executives (and a few of us lowly bloggers).

Some obsevations and highlights from Day 1:

Guarded Optimism - Some quick polls taken of the 100 or so Senior HR Executives in the room expressed fairly positive outlooks on business prospects and hiring trends in their organizations for 2010. Also interesting to note was that several of the presenters remarked that preserving and protecting employees and jobs from the effects of the recession was and remains a key component of ongoing strategy.

Talent - Almost every session touched on the problems that these mostly very large organizations see in acquiring, aligning, and engaging talent. It was actually surprising to hear several of the largest organizations still struggling with some basic and essential activities like consistent performance management or identification of successors for key leadership positions. While all presenters highlighted the new initiatives and improvements they were making, most indicated they still had much work to do in these areas.  There was almost universal focus on 'high-potentials', identifying them, retaining them, and making sure they understood the organization had plans for their growth and success.

Globalization - Since almost all the sessions were presented by very large ,Fortune 100 type companies, there was plenty of dialogue on the problems and challenges in managing a global workforce, deploying technology that can support all the places the organization has presence, and making sure that senior leadership properly reflects and supports global operations. When Chiquita Brands talks about the need for a HRIS solution that will be acceptable for the low bandwith in the Costa Rican banana farms, you know you are dealing with a truly global set of issues.

Branding everywhere - Coca-Cola, the most famous 'brand' in the world, still has lots of work to do on their 'Employer' or 'Talent' Brand. That was a telling comment from such a powerful consumer company. If even a Coca-Cola is concerned about how to best communicate and articulate their EVP, pretty much every company probably needs to be concerned.

Agile Working - The most interesting session of the day was the closing keynote from Fiona Laird of Unilever. The presentation and discussion was on Unilever's 'Agile Working' approach, a new way of working that puts results first, emphasizes the ability to work from anywhere and at anytime, and is supported by management processes and evaluations, the design of physical space, and the critical technologies that can unleash workers from their traditional '9-5' desk jobs.  According to Unilever, the Future of Work is flexible, mobile, and 100% results focused.  That message was an excellent way to close the day.

I plan on diving in to a few of these themes in the next week or so, and also some thoughts on what was not talked about much by the HR Executives (social media, social networking).

Thanks so much to the folks at the Conference Board for inviting me to attend.

The HR Executive Conference

Today and tomorrow I will be attending the Senior HR Executive Conference sponsored by The Conference Board.

The Conference Board is a non-profit organization dedicated to 'helping business strengthen their performance and better serve society'.

They along with many other 'traditional' conferences and established organizations have begun to reach out to the blogging community to gain some insights, some additional exposure, and I suspect in the case of the Conference Board to better understand what the heck is going on in the blog and Social Media world.

VPs and CHROs of some of the largest companies in the world (Coca-Cola, Hewlett-Packard, Xerox) will be presenting of a wide range of topics affecting business, Human Resources, and talent management.

I wonder how they will feel about some live-tweeting during their sessions?

Seriously, since I will have the chance (I hope) to meet and chat with several of the most powerful HR Executives in the country I will put it to you - what would you want to ask these HR leaders?

What does HR need to do to get better?  Is HR Dead? What does the next generation of HR need to know?

If I don't get any good suggestions in the comments, I will have to go with my standard question I ask everyone -

Can I get you to come on the HR Happy Hour Show?

When Jobs Can't be Filled

Last week's White House 'Jobs Summit' brought together an assortment of corporate executives, academics, organized labor, and politicians to discuss the current state of the job market in the United States, and brainstorm ways to spur job creation.

Most of the comments and opinion pieces that came out immediately after the summit highlighted a number of potential strategies to create jobs; tax credits for employers that increase payrolls, a 'cash for caulkers' program meant to increase construction demand, reduced regulatory burden, and some classic large infrastructure projects for highway, bridge, and port repairs.

But the next morning I heard a brief interview with one of the attendees of the summit, some kind of Flickr - nonsequiturlassexecutive in a not-for-profit agency that made what I thought was a really telling, and surprising observation.  He was stunned at the number of corporate executives at the summit that claimed thay they did indeed have available positions, but were having difficulty finding enough qualified candidates to fill these positions.

Let me see if I get this - unemployment in the US at about 10% officially, and likely effectively somewhere between 15% - 20% and any company anywhere can't find the right candidates? From the context of the comments, this was not the occasional  one or two incredibly specialized positions that many companies have that require some esoteric and truly unique set of skills. 

Rather these statements were made more in a 'Hey we have jobs at 'XYZ Company', we just can't find the right people to fill them.'

What are the possible reasons why, in this climate, a major US corporation would have problems of any significance filling open positions:

Your Company Stinks

Even desperate job seekers are holding out for something, anything better than working for you.  Most of the rats who had the chance already abandoned ship. This is not the problem of the education system, or a broken welfare system, or outsourcing anything overseas. No, this is entirely your fault.

You're Inflexible

Lets say you are looking for C++ developers, with 5-10 years experience, and exposure to your industry. And, you are looking for 'local candidates only'.  So now you have limited your target market to not only a specific skill and background set,  but also to candidates that happen to live within commuting distance of your location.  And if you are in a smaller city, or a larger one that has been in decline, this simple geographic limitation is a large part of your problem.  Is it time to consider telework for these kinds of positions?  The talent you need may not live in your town, but chances are they are out there somewhere and a bit more flexibility on your part may be all that is needed to put that talent to work.

You Can't Recruit

You posted the jobs on the corporate website, and maybe on one of the big job boards.  You got lots of applications, but no one really fit the bill.  And then you tweaked the job description, re-posted it, and maybe even Tweeted out the link once or twice. But still the 'right' candidates have not materialized yet. Oh well, it must be a 'hard to fill' job that Americans just don't have the skills or inclination to perform any more.

You Have no Market

You are selling a product.  A package of pay, benefits, experiences, challenges, networks, etc. in exchange for an individual with the needed skills most precious assets: time and attention. But what if you have overestimated the value of what you are selling, the demand in the market for your offering, or frankly the existence of a consumer for your offering in the first place? Are you pushing the employment version of 'Ishtar'? Long term, if you have a job opening like this, one with truly no market, then you really don't have a job opening at all.  And you are wasting everyone's time, frankly.

You Don't Know What You Have

So you have some open positions that are hard to fill for whatever reason.  Are you sure that you don't already have a 'good enough' source of candidates for those positions already in house, working other jobs?  People currently doing jobs that would be easier to backfill if you redeployed, trained, and developed them to grow into some of the 'hard to fill' positions. Maybe some of these people already possess some or all of these skills, acquired from former employers or on their own initiative.  And they have the added benefit of already knowing your company culture and possess their own interpersonal networks.  Before you go to the White House and complain, are you sure you have done enough in your own development efforts to fill these jobs?

Am I being to hard on employers that cry 'We can't find skilled workers?'

Do you have a real example of a job that you truly can't fill right now?

Zoho Recruit - Small Business Applicant Tracking

Last month the online productivity applications vendor Zoho launched yet another new service meant to continue to build out its offerings for the small business market with the introduction of Zoho Recruit, a solution for Applicant Tracking and Resume Management.

Zoho Recruit is targeted to small business as well as small third-pary agency recruiting firms that need a simple, inexpensive, and flexible solution for the management of job postings, applicants, and resumes.

Standard and expected features like job posting creation, applicant management, interview scheduling, and ability to add individual notes to jobs and candidates are included. Additionally, resume parsing and import using the Resume Grabber product from eGrabber. Companies can also leverage Zoho's forms configuration capability to add/change/enhance forms and processes in the application to better align the solution with their specific requirements.

The video below provides a quick overview of Zoho Recruit, additionally there are detailed screenshots and feature descriptions on the Zoho Recruit site.

Zoho Recruit offers a Free Plan for an individual recruiter, and it's Standard Edition is priced at $12 per recruiter/month.  Meaning if you had 5 recruiters using Zoho, the license fee would be $60/month.  A separate license with Resume Grabber is needed to enable the automatic parsing and import of resumes from Outlook, Social Networks, Google Search, etc. into Zoho Recruit, and that cost is approximately $500 yearly.

With the emergence in the last year or so of a number of simple and low-cost ATS solutions for small business (The Resumator, Choosy, Simplicant, etc.), there is almost no reason why even the smallest, least technically capable organizations and HR departments can't take advantage of at least some level of automation to better manage the recruiting process. 

Zoho Recruit is definitely worth a look for small business with these needs, and in particular if the organization is interested in leveraging some of the other online productivity tools Zoho offers (CRM, Documents, Project Management, Wiki, etc.).

Still accepting all your resumes via e-mail attachments and storing them locally, or on a shared network drive?  Maybe it is time to consider a better way.

The Employer Branding Show

Tonight on the HR Happy Hour show at 8PM EST, we are talking 'Employer Branding'.

So like a good host, I figured I'd better do some research on Employer Branding, since to me, while it is a term that most of us have heard of, it is really widely misunderstood. 

Sort of like fuel injection or megapixels.  We know we want them, they are important, but we're not really sure why.

So what is 'Employer Branding' anyway? The simplest definition I came across is on the Whatever You Think blog:

(Employer Branding) is the real and the perceived experience of what that organisation is like to work for.

What is a company really like to work for?  What do the people that work there say?

How about folks Flickr - jacicitathat have left, do they generally feel good about their experiences?

Why as an employee of the company am I compelled to stay?

And why as a candidate am I interested in joining?

Pretty basic right?

But the hard part I think is how that perception is shaped, how the 'experience' is articulated, and perhaps most importantly how it is communicated to those brand consumers (employees, applicants, prospects) that you are trying to influence.

Is this marketing? PR?  Recruiting? 

Some combination of all three?

Or is the whole notion of the 'Employer Brand' really not at all important in a recession.  Most employees are simply happy to still have their jobs, and most candidates just want a job, any job. They don't give a hoot about your 'brand', or do they?

So we will kick these topics around tonight on the HR Happy Hour, 8PM EST, join the fun by calling in on 646-378-1086.