WEBINAR: Top 10 Ways To Use Glassdoor For Good (Not Evil)

Some time back I wrote that I thought Glassdoor was one of the most interesting companies in the HR and HR Tech space. I believed that back then, and I think it is probably even more true today. 

Ask yourself (and be honest) - If you were considering joining a new company is there any possible way you wouldn't check out their Glassdoor ratings, reviews, and interviewing tendencies?

Of course you would - you would be a fool not to. And that same logic is being applied by I bet 95% of the candidates you are trying to pluck from your competitors too. Like it or not, (and plenty of CEOs probably don't), Glassdoor and other employer reputation sources are now too big, too influential, and too much of a 'given' as a source for candidate research for you as and HR/Recruting pro to not be engaged with them on behalf of your organization.

But how to get in the Glassdoor game if you are a little late to the party? First step - close that MySpace account. And next? 

Sign up for the latest installment of the FREE Fistful of Talent webinar on September 17 at 2PM EDT titled Top 10 Ways To Use Glassdoor For Good (Not Evil), where the FOT crew will hat’s why we’re going deep on reputation sites like Glassdoor.

Topics to be covered on the Webinar include: 

How the the Yelp-ification of America—the trend towards consumer-based reviews in almost every area of our economy—is changing the way employees and candidates think about job search and employer brands. It’s second nature for your employees to rate a restaurant, a book or a movie online. That means that employees of all types (not just the ones who want to complain) are more willing than ever to participate in your brand through user review

The 5 Biggest Myths about company reputation sites like Glassdoor and tell you which ones are completely BS and which ones you actually perpetuate by not fully engaging on sites like Glassdoor. We’ll hit the usual suspects here: “The only comments are from the bad employees”  and “The salary data out there isn’t factual,” and tell you why things have changed. More importantly, we’ll cover how you actually may make the myths a reality by not fully engaging on reputation sites.  Think about that last sentence: You’ve got to be in the game to influence the game

A 10-step playbook on how to engage on reputation sites and become more of a Marketer as an HR/Recruiting Pro.  It’s true—you wouldn’t have read this far if you didn’t want to learn more about how to use reputation sites like Glassdoor to maximize your company and your career. We’ll help you get started.

The FOT crew always delivers the goods, I highly recommend you get your push to the end of 2015 going strong and check out the Top 10 Ways To Use Glassdoor For Good (Not Evil), on September 17 at 2PM EDT.

FOLLOW UP: How changing communication preferences are changing HR technologies

Last week on the blog I shared a chart on US teens' communication preferences which showed, (among a few other interesting things), that when it comes to interactions with their friends, email is this group's least preferred method/tool of choice. If you are a parent of a teen, or have ever just observed a teen for more than 10 minutes or so, you would notice them pretty furiously tapping away on their phones almost non-stop - with the vast majority of this activity being SMS messaging, (and to a lesser extent using SnapChat, WhatsApp, and social tools like Instagram). 

What they are almost certainly not doing is sending or replying to email. 

It might be hard for us crusty adults to want to deal with or accept, but anyone under about 25 or so did not grow up relying on email for anything, (save for possibly communications with 'grown ups').

Whenever I run a piece like the 'teens hate email' one, I usually get a few comments or replies on Twitter that more or less say the same thing - 'So what? Email isn't ever going away. When these teens enter the workforce they will simply have to adapt. Blah, blah, blah and get off of my lawn.'

Mostly, it seems, professional adults don't generally see any significant change to email's ubiquity and primacy as the 'professional' communication technology of choice, and fully expect teens and Gen Z types to have to just deal with it if and when they want to get (and keep), a real job.

But is it really that simple? Or asked differently, can us 'adults' really get away with thinking that way? Forever?

So after the 'teens hate email' piece ran last week I received an email from Kay Lucas, VP of Product Strategy at PeopleMatter. In case you are not familiar, PeopleMatter is a leading provider of workforce and talent management technology solutions, focusing primarily on retail, hospitality, and other service provider organizations. Think restaurant chains, convenience stores, hotels - that sort of thing.

The kinds of organizations that do high volume, rapid hiring. And, more importantly, the kinds of organizations that tend to employ lots of folks in their teens and twenties - the kinds of folks that tend to see email as their least preferred method or technology for communication.

So to get back to Kay, here is the full text of the email she sent over last week after my post ran:

Steve,

This past weekend we rolled out a new release and ditched email as being required for applicants for this reason. Just thought you’d be interested in knowing.

Thanks,

Kay

What?

Candidates can actually apply for a job without an email address? 

I had to know more, so I asked Kay for some additional background on this decision and she shared with me some more details (note, I checked with Kay and have her permission to share these emails here).

(Kay Lucas, PeopleMatter)

We decided to do this (allowing customers to make Email an optional field for candidates), because our customers felt like they were losing applicants because email was required. One very large casual dining customer in particular really thought that they were losing two whole groups of people: 1) the younger generation as you point out, 2) the non-tech generation – think of back of the house employees in restaurants and retail. It could be folks where English is not their first language and/or they just don’t care about email because they have no reason for it.

We also know that in our space (service industry), the majority of employees don’t have computers – their phone is their connection. So, texting and mobile friendly are key.

The release literally just happened this past Saturday morning. Here’s what we have already seen: 

On Sunday, the quantity of job applications increased by 5% from the prior Sunday. On Monday, the quantity of job applications increased by 22% from the prior Monday. Wow! We are already blown away and totally pumped we did this. Hats off to our clients and I love listening to them. Makes us so much smarter. They get it and we are so happy that we’ve made this change. The labor market is tight so this is a really big deal for them.

Ok, so I love this for a few different reasons. One, it gives us a direct, real-world example of how teens and others communication preferences, (essentially mobile phone driven, and SMS heavy), are being acknowledged and reflected in how organizations and HR technology providers are deploying HR tools. If your target applicant pool would prefer not to use email, (or simply can't use email), then provide a way for them to interact and apply with you using their desired method.Image courtesy PeopleMatter - click for a large version

Second, it shows really well how good my friends at PeopleMatter understand and react to their customers. Retail and food service are precisely the kinds of industries that would likely have plenty of candidates in the email hating teen to young adult cohort, and this 'email optional' update shows how well the technology can adapt to these needs.

And finally, it serves as a great reminder to all of us, HR leaders and HR technology providers alike, that just because us old farts that make all of the rules and all of the decisions are not that we are not always right, and that we need to be open minded enough to adapt to what today's 19 year olds think too. 

That is if we want to remain relevant once that 19 year old becomes out 26 year old boss in a few years.

Thanks again to Kay Lucas at PeopleMatter for sharing the information on their approach to this issue and if you are an HR leader from retail or food service or hospitality be sure to check out what PeopleMatter is up to.

Have a great week!

Ways to describe basketball talent, ranked

Following up yesterday's post on last night's NBA Draft, (and yes, the subject of that post, one Kristaps Porzingis was indeed selected by my New York Knicks, long may the Porzingis era reign), with a new edition of the ever-popular Ranked series on the blog.

Today, after watching about 5 hours of draft coverage, (and pre-draft and post-draft shows), I offer up ways to describe basketball talent, ranked:

10. Efficient

9. Wingspan

8. Fluid

7. Motor

6. Elite-level athleticism

5. Second jumpability

4. High ceiling

3. Toughness

2. High basketball IQ

1. Tremendous upside

Quick note - If any readers are heading to the SHRM Annual Conference next week in Las Vegas, your humble HR Happy Hour Show hosts, (myself and Trish McFarlane), will be co-presenting a session on HR Technology implementations, (I promise it will be more fun than it sounds), on Tuesday June 30 at 7:00 AM. We will have some HR Happy Hour Show swag to give out as well as busting some common myths about HR technology. Hope to see some of you there.

Have a great weekend!

TALENT ASSESSMENT TIP: Watch out for 'soft' eyes

The NBA Draft is tonight!  Aside, if you follow me on Twitter at @SteveBoese, be forewarned that there will likely be a flurry of NBA Draft tweets starting at about 8PM ET tonight.

As I am sure I have previously covered on the blog here and over at Fistful of Talent, professional sports drafts offer up extraordinary amounts of interest and intrigue and insights about recruiting and talent management that remain relevant for HR/Talent professionals everywhere.

Team management, coaching staffs, and professional talent assessors all spend months evaluating the top playing prospects coming out of college and the European (and other) professional leagues. The teams spend ages watching the players in game video, measure all manner of player's physical attributes, (down to things like hand size), and often will schedule in-depth personal interviews to try to get a better feel for a potential player's likelihood for success in the NBA.

But even after all of this analysis of the player's actual performance in actual games, their 'measurables' like height, speed, jumping ability, etc., and 1-1 interviews, AND in a sport that has embraced advanced statistical analyses more so than any other in order to assess performance and shape strategy, there remains some let's just say odd ways to judge talent.

On one of the many sports talk radio shows I listened to in advance of tonight's draft, one of the network's 'expert' basketball analysts warned against drafting one particular prospect, a 7-footer from Latvia named Kristaps Porzingis. 

This expert's objections to a team using a high draft pick on Porzingis didn't mention lack of ability to shoot or to pass, didn't mention some specific physical limitation the Latvian has that would make him unlikely to succeed in the NBA, nor bring up anything at all related to how data and statistical review of his game led to this negative assessment.

No, the main objective of this particular expert talent evaluator was, according to him, that Porzingis has 'soft' eyes. 

The host of the show was a little taken aback by the comment, and asked the expert to elaborate. The expert said, and I am paraphrasing here, was that when he gazed at Porzingis he doesn't see a look that convinces him that Porzingis will want to work hard and compete at the extreme levels of intensity the NBA requires. In other words, Porzingis didn't have the proverbial 'Eye of the Tiger', but rather he had 'soft' eyes, and thus will never make it in the NBA.

The host of the show, still a little dumbfounded by this kind of talent assessment, eventually let the point go and moved on, but you could tell he remained unsure of the predictive ability of the expert's 'soft' eye test.

The relevance of this little tale for the rest of us?

That you may have a sophisticated candidate assessment tool, a success profile you have developed from analysis of top performers, and a structured and sound interviewing process designed to consistently identify the best candidate for a position.

You may have all of that, but if you run into a decision maker with their own version of the 'soft eyes' test then all your data, and process, and structure could be in jeopardy.

It will be interesting to see where Porzigins and his soft eyes end up getting selected tonight. With my luck, the 'expert' will be right in his assessment and Porzingis will end up failing for my Knicks. 

WEBINAR: 5 Ways To Build a Recruiting Function Your CEO Will Love

Summer is a great time to kick back, take it a little bit easier around the office, and spend at least half your time plotting how you are going to (plausibly), skip out of work on the next 12 Friday afternoons in order to get a head start on some sweet beach action.

Or, it is a great time to take advantage of the slower pace to really dig deep into some important or problematic part of your business and take the time to study, design, and implement some improvements so that when the C-suite gets back engaged around Labor Day the one thing they will notice will be how you 'fixed' things over the summer.

So maybe your dilemma is in Recruiting. Maybe you are having a hard time finding and attacting the right candidates, and even when you do, the team isn't strong enough on the close to cement the deal.

Well, never fear, the gang at Fistful of Talent is here to help you get a reset via our roadmap for building a high performing Talent Acquisition/Recruiting function. Join FOT's Kris Dunn and RJ Morris for our FREE June webinar (sponsored by the recruiting experts at CareerBuilder) on June 24th at 2pm Eastern (1pm Central) entitled, Moving Past Smile and Dial: 5 Ways to Build a Recruiting Function Your CEO Will Love, and they will hit you with the following roadmap to help you build the perfect recruiting machine.

1. The Front End: There's never been more competition for the attention of candidates, so you've got to look GOOD.  We'll help you understand the value of front-end items like a robust Careers Site, Talent Networks, Job Descriptions that don't put people to sleep, and ATS messaging designed to make people smile---not cringe.  We'll also give you a roadmap for how to use Social Media in a way that makes candidates feel like your company gets it.

2. The Back End: The worst enemy of any recruiting function is disorganization, so we'll cover critical elements of your back office like ATS functionality, the mission critical nature of having your own searchable candidate database as a strategic advantage, automated job distribution/postings and more.  Your recruiting function is only as good as your back end, so we'll help you understand how to build it out.

3. Building Your Recruiting Strategy: How many recruiters do you need?  How do you calculate your investment in recruiting?  What should that investment be?  How do you measure the effectiveness of your Recruitment Marketing Spend?   Good questions. We've got the answers in this strategy section.

4. Creating a Coaching Culture in Recruiting and Measuring Your Success: You can do all of the things listed above well, but if you don't actively coach your recruiters, it probably won't matter.  We'll give you some benchmarks for recruiter performance goals and walk you through how successful recruiting managers treat recruiters like salespeople – ultimately wanting filled positions but coaching up and down the recruiting funnel/

Whether you're a Recruiting/HR Leader looking to remodel your recruiting function or an up and coming recruiter looking to understand the strategic side of the recruiting business, join FOT for Moving Past Smile and Dial: 5 Ways to Build a Recruiting Function Your CEO Will Love on June 24th at 2pm Eastern (1pm Central) to get ramped up.  As a bonus, we'll also provide a FOT Checklist – 10 Things To Do Today to Maximize Your Ability to Attract Great Talent – to all who register.  This checklist is a great tool to cross off what you've already done well, then use it as an avenue to show what you're missing when asking for more budget for your recruiting function.

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