Grading Talent the Big Tuna Way

Last night ESPN ran an interesting behind-the-scenes look at how American professional teams typically evaluate talent, with special guest former National Football League executive and head coach Bill 'Big Tuna' Parcells. The context of the show was the league's upcoming college player draft, the annual exercise where the league's teams assess, grade, and ultimately select from 5-10 players each to 're-supply' the talent on their teams. It is a massive, high-stakes, expensive, and critically important recruiting, assessment, and alignment exercise.

Parcells' resume and achievements as a successful coach, and talent evaluator are solid - he served in very senior roles at several NFL organizations, winning two Super Bowl Championships as the Head Coach of the New York Football Giants. 

In the show Parcells' shared some of the talent selection criteria and thought processes that organizations that he was a member of, and in general, most other teams tend to follow when making player selections in the league's annual college player draft. Some of the criteria and processes were fairly obvious, and would apply generally to any talent selection or recruiting context, (players who had been kicked off their college team for disciplinary reasons should be avoided), but some of the other concepts Parcells discussed perhaps are not so apparent to casual observers, and just might have some additional applicability to more conventional talent selection processes.

Here are three Talent Evaluation ideas straight from the Big Tuna:

1. Understand the predictors of success (some are not so obvious)

In NFL football every team measures and grades the basic and easily understood physical characteristics of potential draftees, (height, weight, strength, speed), but during the show Parcells mentioned a few not-so-obvious keys he assesses, (e.g. for the position of cornerback, length of the player's arms). For potential quarterback prospects, Parcells insisted he only wanted players that actually graduated from college, as he felt it demonstrated intelligence, and more importantly commitment. 

The larger point is every competitor has access to the same talent pool, the basic and obvious assessment criteria are widely known and universally adopted, so finding the less clear and more predictive evaluation criteria that other teams may not have discovered is one of the ways to claim some advantage and make better selection decisions than the competition.

2. Make sure everyone involved in Talent selection understands these predictors

Once the criteria is established, and a process to collect and assess these criteria developed, Parcells emphasized the critical need for everyone involved in the talent selection process to understand the criteria, and consistently grade to the criteria. From scouts, to assistant coaches, to even the team owner, the definition of what a top candidate looks like has to be understood by everyone. There are so many players to assess, that no one member of the organization can possibly 'know' every candidate, so the selection process becomes a team effort, and the talent selection team has to have that common ground for any chance of success. Talent is talked about in the common language of the team's assessment ratings, and no conversation about talent fails to reference these assessments.

3. Know yourself

Parcells described a common acronym used in football draft processes, NFU, which means 'Not For Us'. This term is assigned to players that the strict adherence to positional capability assessments or past production in the college game might indicate are good candidates and should be considered in the selection process. But these NFL players have raised some concern off the field, of their attitude, style, work ethic somehow will not be a cultural match to what the organization is looking for. Parcells strongly advises teams to know themselves, know the style they want to play, the kinds of mental makeups that players need to have to 'fit' on the team, and to avoid the temptation of selecting players with fantastic physical skills that might not 'fit' otherwise. These kinds of gambles rarely work out, and they are the ones that get coaches and talent evaluators fired.

But in the end, despite incredibly detailed and complex processes for physical measurement, tests of intelligence, and well-documented and easily reviewed past performance in college football, selecting players for NFL teams is still and imperfect process. So-called 'can't miss' top prospects often fail to live up to expectations, while others deemed marginal prospects once vetted by the traditional processes end up as star players.

Having a system and some ground rules to follow, to find ways to uncover predictors your competition may have missed, and perhaps most importantly a deep and confident organizational self-awareness are a few ways our pal the Big Tuna offered up to try and land more Peyton Mannings and less Ryan Leafs (inside football reference, Google it).

Plantville: Gaming as a Recruiting Tool

Of course you know about the rapid growth of the series of Facebook-based games Farmville, CityVille, and the like. Some estimates indicate as many as 250 million people play one of the 'Ville'-style social games. Ah - Industry!

With so many people, across all demographic groups, engaging in these massively popular games online, it only makes sense for organizations that are facing recruiting challenges to look for opportunities to leverage these gaming concepts in their recruiting and candidate engagement efforts.

The Germany-based industrial company Siemens, is one such company that is experimenting with games, at least in part as a recruiting vehicle. Specifically, Siemens has developed an online interactive game called 'Plantville', that gives players the opportunity and challenge of running a virtual factory, complete with evaluation of key performance indicators, allocation of scarce capital funds, and the ability to improve process efficiency with the purchase and installation of (naturally) more Siemens equipment. Factory managers in Plantville have to hire and deploy workers, balance worker safety and satisfaction against production delivery schedules, and continuously adapt strategies to changing external conditions.

It actually sounds like a fun game, in a geeky kind of way. 

The 'Getting Started' in Plantville video is embedded below: (email and RSS subscribers may need to click through)

While the game serves as a kind of marketing tool to help educate the public, current employees, and potential customers about Siemens products, the executives at Siemens also see the Plantville game as a part of their employee recruiting strategy.

In a recent Business Week article about the increasing use of games in various business scenarios, Siemens Tom Varney, Head of Marketing Communications, observes, "With Plantville, we think there's a big educational play with colleges and high schools." Varney also indicates he hopes the game can help make manufacturing more attractive to young people. "We have about 3,000 jobs posted in the U.S. at Siemens, many in technology or manufacturing," he says. "We're hoping to inspire a new generation of plant managers."

It is an interesting approach, and one that makes sense in what by many accounts seems to be a tightening labor market for high-skilled and high-tech candidates. It has to be difficult for more traditional manufacturing companies that are facing mounting pressures to groom the next generation of technical and managerial talent to compete for the most desirable candidates with the likes of Google, Facebook, and ironically, Zynga, the makers of many of the popular 'Ville' games.

Could online interactive games like 'Plantville' capture the energy, attention, and fascination of enough young people to help make manufacturing exciting again?

Are you seeing more companies looking to leverage the insane popularity of these kinds of games for recruiting purposes?

Meanwhile, I need to run - I am thinking of installing some high-tech security cameras in my 'Plantville' factory.

'Like' this job on Facebook

At the recent ERE Expo in San Diego, I had a chance to interview Stephane Le Viet, CEO and Founder; and Matt Brown, Director of Business Development of Work4Labs, the company responsible for the popular Facebook recruiting application known as 'Work 4 Us'.

Work 4 Us is a Facebook application that allows organizations to quickly and easily add job listings to their company Facebook page, whether by automated import from the company ATS or career site, or via manual entry. Once imported or entered, the company can then leverage the social sharing capabilities inherent inside Facebook (individual jobs can be shared and 'liked'); and the supported integration with the Facebook advertising platform allows the creation of more precise ad campaigns designed to get the company job listings noticed by the target candidate audience on Facebook. Tracking and analytical tools allow the organization to assess and evaluate the reach and success of their job posting campaigns.

That's assuming the desired candidate pool is on Facebook. And considering that pretty much everyone these days from your 12-year old nephew to your 83-year old Grandma seems to be on Facebook it is a pretty good bet that at least some of your desired candidates are out there.

Work4Labs claims over 6,000 organizations have installed the Work For Us application to date, with large, multi-nationals like L'Oreal and Citi among the applications' most notable adopters.

Yesterday the team at Work4Labs announced a new enhancement to the Work For Us application, namely the ability to present the Facebook user that views a job description in the application with a suggested list of Facebook friends, and optionally LinkedIn contacts that might be a suitable match for the job, and perhaps would be interested in the job details. Once authorized, the app processes Facebook and LinkedIn profile data – education, work history, interests, location, and so on – to suggest the most relevant friends for the job.

Sample job listing posted using Work For Us with suggested friends:

This is the kind of functionality, a matching algorithm based suggestion engine, that social recruiting technology solutions are increasingly adopting in recognition that simply broadcasting links of available jobs to all of one's social connections is not only inefficient but can also be seen as highly annoying. By making the social sharing and referral process simple, easy to use, and more relevant by narrowing and suggesting social contacts to share the job information with, the hope is that the organization will not only just see it's job posting shared widely, but that the likelihood of social discovery of candidates that are good fits for the positions will increase.

More and more organizations are actively pursuing so-called 'social recruiting' strategies, whether it is using blogs, LinkedIn groups, Twitter accounts, and even Facebook to advertise positions, communicate and articulate the company employer brand, and more effectively engage with candidates and prospects. If your organization is starting down this path, or is considering adding a more active Facebook component to the mix, then you should give Work4Labs a look.

The Work For Us application installs to a Facebook page in literally minutes and has a number of pricing plans, ranging from Free (allows posting of one open position at a time), to $799/month that offers unlimited job postings, automatic import from an ATS, and other customization capabilities. All paid plans offer a 30-day free trial period.

So are you actively recruiting on Facebook? Thinking about starting?  Would the Work For Us application work for you?

The Right Person for the Job

...might actually be the exact opposite of what your job requirements say.

Now hear me out for a second. I know if you are the recruiter responsible for hiring, say, the next anesthesiologist for the operating room, that you had better be darn sure that to folks you present know how to safely administer sedation, monitor their patient's condition, and respond quickly and effectively if something goes awry.  These critical skills and experiences for that kind of role are obvious and non-negotiable. I get it. Similarly, if you were hiring the next pilot for your company's charter airline service, things like 10,000 hours flying comparable aircraft, and a history of 'not showing up drunk for work' are pre-requisites for anyone aspiring to the gig.

But most of the jobs in the American economy are not life or death propositions, and the relative importance of published job requirements are certainly up for debate.  Sure, if you are looking to hire a Sr. Developer in 'XYZ' programming language, then at least some demonstrable knowledge and experience in XYZ are a real and defensible requirement, but again, most companies slap an artificial 'years of experience' qualifier to whatever particular technical skill they require. 

The thinking makes sense, you need a really proficient XYZ Developer, one that you don't have time to train, and that you are willing to pay the going market rate that kind of skill commands.  So you draw on your personal or organizational insight and determine for someone to actually have developed the level of XYZ expertise you are after, that the person must have been messing about with XYZ in a professional capacity for 2 or 5 or 10 years. It doesn't really matter what 'number' you land on, but rather that you have set the 'floor' of experience that you say you need. 

But by setting that more or less artificial and experiential floor, you have determined that you really don't care so much about actual and potentially demonstrable technical ability as you do about a candidate's ability to had you a resume that 'proves' the 5 years of experience is all in order. We don't really care what the candidates can do, we just care that they have done something related to the job description for the proscribed amount of time.

But what actually made me think about this topic, one I have written about before, was a recent piece in the Harvard Business Review's 'The Conversation' blog called 'Want Innovative Thinking? Hire from the Humanities. In the piece, author Tony Golsby-Smith articulates a case for organizations that are increasingly challenged to innovate faster, to surface more creative ideas, and to simply 'out-think' their competition, that a more expansive and inclusive set of hiring practices should be leveraged. Instead or bringing in yet another class of Top 20 Business School educated MBA's, firms should consider recruiting more students from humanities programs, as in the author's contention, humanities training can produce more innovative thinking, enhanced capability to embrace ambiguity, and perhaps most critically, more effective communication skills, both written and verbal.

We can debate the 'required skills' versus 'find the smartest people' issues forever. But for me, one thing is certain, each additional 'position requirement' you list on the job requisition makes your potential pool smaller, and of course that is what we want. 

But at some point, the combination of these (possibly arbitrary) requirements, and the other non job skills specific factors (salary, location, company reputation, prospects, etc.), narrow the pool so much, that millions of jobs sit unfilled at the same time more millions of people are out of work.

In NFL football, when the teams hold the annual player draft, each team determines a position or two of dire need, that they really want to try to fill with a new college draftee.  But when their turn comes to select a player, and the most talented options for their position of most need are all gone, they don't pass on their turn. Instead they select the 'best player available' regardless of whether or not they really need another player at that position. 

They know, as most high performing organizations do, that assembling the most talent, even if they don't exactly fit into a pre-determined set of boxes is, in the long run, a winning strategy.

This Job is Not For You

Came across yet another one of those 'offbeat and quirky job adverts/application processes' yesterday, this one from the folks at UK Ad Agency SELL!SELL!

Titled  'This Job is Not For You', the application form for the position, a junior level role in account/project management, asks candidates to answer questions like, 'Who's the best, Batman or Colonel Oliver North? Why?', and asks them to 'Post a video of yourself telling a joke on YouTube and share the link (can be private) here'.

The application form is below, and is also posted here.

These kinds of unusual application processes and job descriptions are starting to get more common, especially in creative fields like advertising, design, or even marketing; and I suppose really are not all that newsworthy anymore. But what I liked about this advertisement and application process is its explicit focus on why candidates would not be right for the job and how it focuses prospective applicants that were not going to be a good fit for the position to really challenge themselves to consider self-screening out.

Most typical and boring job advertisements for similar roles across organizations read kind of the same; an Administrative Assistant position at Company 'A' reads exactly the same as a similar role at Company 'B'.  But the myriad of other factors that would make a qualified candidate a better 'fit' at one firm versus the other are normally not even hinted at, much less explicitly communicated.

Sure, a phone screen or in-person interview might shed light on these culture and style issues, and be reasonably effective at weeding out candidates that are not a good match culturally for the organization, but the unusual method of communication and atypical format of the job application like the one above from Sell!Sell! would provide an efficient pre-screening filter for applicants.  

I know what you are thinking, these kinds of crazy application processes and offbeat blog postings that encourage candidates not to apply might work for a boutique, creative ad agency, but for my staid and traditional firm they would never fly. I need to roll out the fully approved and vetted (and incredibly boring) job description to my online ad, and make sure I require the same resume, cover letter, and list of references from every applicant, (who all have been well-coached to not submit anything at all 'unsafe' or potentially interesting, lest they stand out from the pack too much).

The end result, often, is a stack of barely distinguishable candidate packages that don't do all that much to offer any insight to the candidate's likelihood to be a good match to your organizational culture.

Unless of course your 'culture' is centered on plainness and looking like every other competitor, then almost all in your pack of candidates will seem like a fit.

Happy Weekend!

Note - I know the application form above asks for videos, pictures, etc.; the kind of things that at least in the US can get you into trouble, I am not advocating that companies do anything that runs afoul of laws and regulations around EEO. So there.