And this is what we do

Remember the Chrysler spot featuring Eminem that ran during the Super Bowl a few months ago?

Of course you do - it was pretty epic, and by many accounts it was the one of the best, if not the best, commercial that ran during the game. In case you don't recall, or just need another two-minute fix, here it is again (email and RSS subscribers may need to click through):

Yesterday, the Mashable blog ran a short video piece featuring highlights from 25 Years of Animation from Pixar Animation Studios. Equally cool as the Eminem spot, but for different reasons. If you missed it, the video is embedded below (email and RSS subscribers may need to click through):

While not ostensibly recruiting type videos, they both easily could pass for them, and probably have a kind of ancillary benefit as such. When we talk about recruiting in the context of communicating to prospects and candidates about the 'employee value proposition' and conveying the 'employer brand', it seems like much of the conversation focuses on humanizing the organization - sharing the stories of real employees via video or written testimonials; and encouraging recruiters to develop more meaningful relationships and increased levels of genuine engagement and interaction with their talent communities.

While I agree that this 'humanization' concern is often necessary, and certainly important it might be that all the talk about making the personal connection and driving home the message about 'who we are', can take our focus too far from 'what we do'. And the 'what we do' message might just be as important, if not more important than the 'we have lots of fantastic people working here message.'

Every company has great people, or at least some great people. It isn't all that hard to find and highlight individual stories and achievements that help to drive home that message. But not as many organizations truly set their great people free to the degree that they do indeed create fantastic things, like we see in the Pixar example above.

An aspiring animator or storyteller can watch the Pixar piece above and know that while none of the 'people' that create that kind of magic were featured or even named in the video, that certainly going to work at Pixar would mean being surrounded by incredibly talented colleagues, and better still, ones that have the environment that supports that kind of fantastic achievement. 

Sending out a recruiting message that says 'we have some amazing people here' is good, sharing the message of 'And we do some incredble things here' is better. And a much more challenging story to tell, but if you do, and can shape the story the right way the effect is pretty powerful.

How about you? Could you tell your 'And this is what we do' story in a way that would make us want to come and join you?

Edgy is Relative

I confess I was at a bit of a loss for a topic for this today’s post.  The hubbub over TheLadders seems to have died down, so I ruled that out as a subject.

The Super Bowl is now a few weeks passed, and has already been covered elsewhere in the HR blogosphere by the HR version of Slim Shady himself, the great Kris Dunn, who shared his take on the key differences in the two ad spots that featured Eminem.

The Charlie Sheen meltdowns, while epic, already seem kind of tired as Chas. Sheen’s myriad media appearances have the effect of dulling the crazy to the point where the only thing he can do to attempt to remain interesting is to act even more bizarre, which is almost not possible at this point.

Back in the ‘real world’ of HR, recruiting, talent, etc. things seem to be in a bit of lull, in that down period after the holidays and end of the year, but before HR conference season really picks up, and with it the surge in energy, vendor announcements, and general excitement that seem to surround HR pros annual pilgrimages to Vegas, Orlando, Chicago, or wherever; in search of sponsored cocktail hours and juicy swag.

In fact, if it weren’t for TheLadders in the HR/Recruitment space, and the Super Bowl or Charlie Sheen for everyone else, I am not sure we would have anything at all to talk about, blog about, or otherwise debate as (for most of us in the USA), meander our way slowly through what has been a long, cold, harsh winter. Even the ongoing Labor Relations drama in Wisconsin seems to be already getting relegated to the back pages.

I kind of think many of us are more or less heads-down, slogging through the last part of the cold season, hoping to wake up from hibernation in time for the North Central East Southwest SHRM Annual Conference and Exposition.

Good times. If you go score me new stress ball.

Then it hit me, anyone trying to get our attention this time of year figures they have to go for the provocative, the scandalous, or the edgy.  Whether it is middle-age finance types cavorting around the office furniture in TheLadders ads, or Super Bowl commercials with people getting smacked in the head with Pepsi cans, the marketers, PR professionals, and Twitter celebrities have (probably rightly) concluded that the only way to get you to wake up and look away from your iPhone for two minutes is to go for the shock and awe. Edgy may be cool, but it comes with one huge problem - edgy is relative.  Go for the edge and you immediately alienate that part of the audience that may not have given you much of a chance to begin with, but now for sure will not.

Edgy only has meaning when compared to your audience’s past experiences, what they have seen, read, and know.  What matters is not so much the absolute shock value of your pitch, personal brand, website, Facebook page, or creative job ad; but rather it’s relative salaciousness compared to the drivel your competitors are offering.  Why does an online job ad that differs ever so slightly from the mainstream formula seem so innovative and dare I say ‘edgy?’. Because compared to 99% of the mundane and monotonous, an ad that sprinkles in just a couple of off-the-wall phrases, or flashes the tiniest  bit of attitude in the ‘Required job duties’ section will read like the second coming of On The Road.

Any corporate ‘What it’s like to work here’ section on the career site that goes for the gusto simply by refraining from a recount or laundry list of the company core values, or victories as a ‘Best Place to Work’ by the local merchants association (‘Downtown East Hartford loves us!’), will seem like the next Zappos, Google, or Facebook on the wow scale.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not advocating more play it safe behavior, more boring and expected job ads, company websites, or inane ‘A Message from the CEO’ statements, what I am offering are words of encouragement and hope.  Edgy is relative.  In the HR and recruiting space you can have an incredible incremental impact by just being slightly less tedious than your competition. You don’t have to convince your Director of Purchasing to do a gag-inducing striptease on the conference room table to get noticed. You don’t have to run the risk of a social media backlash.

Mostly, to be memorable, you just have to be the tiniest bit less of a dullard than the next company. Which we all know is pretty easy.

No go out there and mildly surprise someone!

Trains and Perception

How much is the perception of the experience impacted by what the experience is called?

There have been a few recent rants posts about some dreadful experiences with air travel recently. China Gorman made her blogging debut on the HR Capitalist with a tale of woe on a recent flight, and Mike VanDervort at the Human RaceHorses blog documented a unforgettably poor experience trying to make his way home from the SHRM conference.

It is not news that air travel can really suck, and that customers are often subject to rude, inconsiderate, and even downright offensive treatment at times by airline employees, policies, and even fellow customers. To be fair, to me it still is an incredible experience to be able to strap inside a metal tube, blast off 35,000 feet into the sky, travel thousands of miles in a few hours, and arrive safely at your destination. I am not going to try and defend the industry, but it does seem like perhaps we are all a bit spoiled.  Sure United broke that guy’s guitar and he made certain that we all knew about it. In fact, United breaking his guitar was probably the luckiest break that band ever had.

But what about the millions of other pieces of checked crap that is moved successfully each day? No one blogs or makes catchy videos called ‘United transported by ridiculously heavy bag of golf clubs safely to Myrtle Beach’.

Maybe the airlines need to take a step to improving their image (and perhaps the customer service they deliver), by taking a page from Amtrak.  Book passage on an Amtrak train and you are likely to be traveling on the ‘Coastal Starlight’, the ‘Silver Meteor’, or the ‘Happyland Express’.

Take a redeye flight from Los Angeles to New York and you are liable to be on #AA27’, which quickly can morph in to ‘Steerage to Oblivion’, ‘Six Hours in a Middle Seat in Coach’, culminating in a ‘Sweaty Wait on the Tarmac.’

Perhaps it is just me, but somehow I get the feeling that employees, customers, and everyone else associated with making sure the ‘Coastal Starlight’ makes it successfully, safely, and positively from Seattle to LA are just a bit more motivated and excited that the community that surrounds ‘UA6033’, one flight that travels that same route.  

And if I am right, the same logic could be applied inside the organization, to programs that you have to maintain and administer, but don’t necessarily engender excitement and enthusiasm from the HR staff tasked to deliver, and the employees and managers forced to participate. Create a title that resonates and connects.

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Instead of marching off managers to ‘Mandatory Regulatory Compliance Update Training’, send them to ‘Who’s Next on the Perp Walk - Don’t Let it Be You’.  

I think people might get pretty fired up for that class.

The Commodification of the Self

I did not invent the phrase in the title of this post, it comes from a piece by Shalom Auslander called 'Meet the Happy New Me, Same as the Crappy Old Me', in the March 2010 issue of GQ magazine, (only available online to subscribers).Flickr - David Clow

The article alternates between funny, insightful, depressing, and funny (again) as it depicts the author's own 'personal branding' journey from, in his words, 'miserable and pissed off' to 'shiny and happy'.

After a series of assignments undertaken as part of an online 'Personal Branding' class, ('Develop a personal catchphrase' and 'Create a logo for yourself'), Auslander asks the question, 'Why didn't anyone seem to think that the commodification of the self was a problem?'

I think it is a valid question.

Has the ridiculously crappy economy and the widespread and persistent unemployment rate conspired to make us all little mini-moguls? Are we all getting overly obsessed with staying on message, carefully constructing our own tiny ad campaigns, looking for just the right post to Retweet, LinkedIn group to join, and event to attend (or vicariously attend). Are we trying too consciously to craft little marketing plans?

Think about all the things we always said we hated, incessant commercials on tv and radio, rampant product placement in mainstream entertainment (quick, what is the 'official' beverage of American Idol? I am sure you know), internet pop-up ads, and maybe most importantly people that simply have to be the center of attention all the damn time.  At least in more traditonal entertainment and communication channels it is (mostly) easy to tell when you are being sold to.

When Simon takes a swig of his Coke, we know what is going on.

And I don't think I am confusing personal branding, which is more or less annoying, with individual entrepreneurship and initiative, which is inspiring.  They are not the same thing, but I can't help but get the feeling that in this age of openness, status updates ('Starbucks Quad Shot FTW!!!!'), and thousands if not millions of people having mostly the same idea, reading the same books, blogs, and advice that the good work (or lack thereof) is getting mixed up with the message.

Some of the people reading this post are really active on social networks like Twitter and Facebook.  I wonder if you thought about the list of the 50 or 100 or so people you interact with the most and relflect on how much do you know about the actual work they do, compared to what you know or perceive about their 'brand'?

I am guilty of all of this too.  It seems many people are to some extent and that is what makes the whole branding/packaging/selling of the self so frustrating. When every network for communication and transmission of information becomes a sales channel for companies and individuals at the same time, I suppose it is only to be expected that everyone is selling.  But selling Coke or iPods isn't the same as selling a person.  Product brands usually stand for just one thing, but people, at least the most interesting ones you know, are deep, multi-layered, and complicated. 

Maybe we need a TiVo equivalent for all these networks as well, so that we could fast forward though all the commercials and focus on the content.

And maybe I need some more coffee.

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.