How much does industry specific experience matter?

Lifted from a comment left on Tuesday's 'Chocolate Foresight Activator' post was this question from commenter Stew, who wondered about my conclusion/observation that since Hershey didn't mention the word 'chocolate' at all in the job posting for this 'Chocolate Futurist' role, that maybe what they really wanted was the best marketer/planner/designer/strategist they could find, even if he/she didn't know much or even care about chocolate:

This job scares me a little as it sounds more like the "Phillip Morris's" style job..

i.e. you don't have to care about smoking - just love marketing.

If you look at "Whittakers Chocolate" they would argue you should have a passion for the chocolate......and the marketing will follow.

Another way of raising the classic question about industry specific experience, and its relative importance as a predictor of success in most types of support functions or back office roles.

Or said differently, do you really need to have had 5 years experience as a chocolate company marketer, in order to qualify for a job as a marketing manager for say a jelly bean manufacturer?

Or does someone's marketing functional experience generally translate across industries, making the fundamental or core marketing skills like demand generation, content creation, sales enablement, etc. the real prerequisites for success in most any marketing job?

After all, a bright enough and motivated enough person can learn just about anything, (leaving aside for obvious reasons those highly skilled and really critical you don't mess up kinds of jobs like airline pilot, brain surgeon, point guard), so in the above example if an organization had a choice between a great marketer than did not know the candy business or a candy expert that did not know much about marketing, then which way should they go?

But since no one has time, budget, resources to do much on the job training, we usually try to land candidates that meet both criteria - functional expertise and industry experience.

We want candidates to show not only can they do the job, but that they can do the job here.

I wonder how much of the 'skills gap' isn't masquerading as a 'industry experience gap?'

What say you, how much, for roles that are generally pretty transferable from one domain to another, does specifc industry experience matter for a candidate?

It's pretty easy to be a bad interviewer

I've never been a recruiter and have not spent a significant amount of time doing candidate interviews over the years. I have, however, done about 175 HR Happy Hour Shows/Podcasts that are (mostly) centered around asking questions of guests and trying to evoke interesting answers. So I like to think, like most people do probably, that I somehow 'know' how to interview well, and that in fact, interviewing isn't really all that hard.

And even if I didn't think that somehow I'd cracked the interviewing secrets, a simple Google search on 'Interview tips for the interviewer' reveals about 1.7 million results - surely with all that content available it should not be all that tough to become at least competent, if not proficient, at conducting interviews. Then fold in the usual familiarity with either the subject matter, (in the case of interviewing someone for a position in your organization), or the subject him or herself, (as in the case that I want to mention, talking to one of your family members).

Here is the scene, (edited slightly for clarity and due to my failing memory), starring Me as 'Me', and my 13 year-old as 'P'.

Me: So, P, do you have any concerns about your class trip to Washington D.C. that is coming up?

P: No.

Me: (after a pause). See, I made a mistake in the way that I asked you about the trip. I asked you a 'close ended' question. Do you know what a close ended question is?

P: No.

Me: I did it again. A close ended question is one that can be correctly answered with either a 'Yes' or a 'No'. What I should have done is asked the question differently, with an 'open ended' question. With an 'open ended' question, you can't just answer Yes or No. You have to give a little more information and hopefully share more of what you are thinking. Do you see what I mean?

P: Yes.

Me: Ok, let's try again. 'What concerns you about your upcoming class trip to Washington D.C.?'

P: Nothing

<scene>

There you have it. Even though I think I am pretty clever, even though a big part of what I do involves talking to people and getting them to share information, even though there exists almost unlimited resources from which to learn, and finally, even though I was familiar with the subject matter, (the class trip), and extremely familiar with the subject, (my 13 year-old), I still failed as an interviewer.

He still was able to tell me just about nothing, I failed at coaxing him to elucidate, and I don't really know anything more than if we never had the conversation.

What is the point of telling the story?

I think it is this - that we probably don't spend enough time thinking about getting better at interviewing because we think that one; it is easy, and two; we are already as proficient as we need to be.

It is kind of like driving. Everyone thinks they are a good driver, yet the roads are full of lunatics.

Ask around your HR shop sometime, I bet everyone thinks they are good at conducting interviews. That can't possibly be true, right?

Ack - that was another close ended question!

Happy Thursday!

Super fast internet and talent strategies

Did you catch the recent announcement on the official Google blog that named the initial short list of US cities that are potentially next in line for the construction and deployment of Google's super fast internet service called Google Fiber?

If you are not familiar, Google Fiber is the search giant's ambitious project to wire up neighborhoods and cities with fiber-basd internet networks that deliver speeds 100 times faster than what most of us have at home today. Now Google is talking about expanding the Fiber program beyond the early projects in Kansas City, Austin and Provo, and has invited cities in nine metro areas around the U.S.—34 cities altogether—to collaborate and participate in an exercise to see what it would take to bring Google Fiber to those cities.

Here is the map of Google's targeted locations, (courtesy of the Google blog):

What can we take away, if anything, about HR, talent, or recruiting strategies from a project like Google Fiber, and more specifically, the locations where Google has or is considering investing time and resources on the Fiber project?

I'd offer a few potential considerations:

1. If you believe talented people will flock towards or be less likely to leave places that are 'Fibered up', then the location choices and deployment of gigabit speed internet networks should play into your talent strategy. You might be able to find talent, especially technical talent, in these locations more easily, and maybe even more cost-effectively than in other places.

2. If you are located in an non-Fiber locale, and are not on anyone's short list for this kind of a project, then you may, eventually, have to make some accommodations on that front. If you are a Chicago company maybe you will one day need a small satellite office in a place like Kansas City, or similarly if you are looking to expand West maybe setting up shop in Portland over Seattle might be the right play.

3.  If you are already in one of the nine large metros that are now under review for Fiber, and for some reason you are not selected, (lack of municipal cooperation, lack of infrastructure, not enough local support), and the Goog decides to pass you by, then you have to think about what that impact might be for you medium and long term. You might have to spend some time 'defending' your city, particularly with relocation candidates, as a progressive and hip place, not some backwater, (I am looking at you Birmingham), that did not make the cut for super fast internet.

I am sure you can think of some other ideas about how, or even if, these kinds of quality of life projects impact organizations and their ability to attract and retain talent. I think too often in HR/Talent we focus so much about what is going on inside our own four walls that we forget that our prized talent, (for the most part), actually has to live and hopefully be happy living, within an hour's drive of the office.

What do you think? Do you care about this or not from an HR/Talent perspective?

But I bet if your city does get Google Fiber you would include that little tidbit in the 'About (insert your city here)' portion of all your job listings.

Happy Thursday!

An aging workforce case study: When clowning isn't cool anymore

I've posted a few times over the last year or so on the blog about the really interesting and important demographic changes happening in the American workforce. Mostly, these changes break down into two, related areas. One, the workforce and the population overall is aging. And two, the overall US labor force participation rate is falling, due in large part to the increasing number and pace of retirements of baby boom generation workers.

But those posts of mine I've linked to above, and honestly most of the 'Econ' type articles on these trends (and their implications for workplaces, companies, and policy), tend to be pretty dry and mostly academic and not really the kinds of pieces that really make anyone think for more than a minute or two about them. Bar charts with fancy shading or graphs with some trend lines can only move you so much. None of seems all that real if you get my meaning.

So for this re-set and take on the aging workforce and what it might mean for you, instead of dropping another chart and trying to convince you that this stuff matters, I want to point you to a short, but fascinating piece from the NY Daily News titled National Clown Shortage May Be Approaching, Trade Organizations Fear that illustrates just how these trends are playing out in the real world, (if 'clowning' could be considered the real world that is).

Turns out there aren't enough people, especially younger people, taking up professional clowning as an occupation. Check some quotes from the NYDN piece:

Membership at the country’s largest trade organizations for the jokesters has plunged over the past decade as declining interest, old age and higher standards among employers align against Krusty, Bozo and their crimson-nosed colleagues.

“What’s happening is attrition,” said Clowns of America International President Glen Kohlberger, who added that membership at the Florida-based organization has plummeted since 2006. “The older clowns are passing away.”

“The challenge is getting younger people involved in clowning,” said Association President Deanna (Dee Dee) Hartmier, who said most of her members are over 40.

“What happens is they go on to high school and college and clowning isn’t cool anymore,” he said. “Clowning is then put on the back burner until their late 40s and early 50s.”

Right there, in the micro-micro world of professional clowning you can see just about all of the major issues with much wider swaths of the workplace and jobs landscape today.

The job has been around a long time, but kids don't see it as cool anymore, and not enough of them are entering the field.

The incumbents are all getting older, retiring, even dying off and shortages are manifesting.

But the job, believe it or not, has higher standards for entry than in the past, so at the same time that interest in the field is falling, the barriers to entry are rising. And customers, the end customers I mean, are demanding more and more for thieir dollar. According to Ringling Bros. Director of Talent David Kiser, “Our audience expects to be wowed. No longer is it good enough to just drop your pants and focus on boxer shorts.”

Ok, at this point, if you have not already bailed out, I want you to think past the scary clown shortage, and consider the roles and people in your organization.

There is almost no doubt you have some of these kinds of 'clown' roles in your shop - ones that are important to the business, but for some reason do not attract enough of a pipeline or candidate flow to sustain once the incumbents trail off. But at the same time as these jobs get more important and pressing to fill, business or technology changes make the qualifications you are looking for even more difficult. Finally, these are still 'clown' jobs after all, they are not the best paying, most socially desirable kinds of gigs.

Oh, one last thing - in the 'If my suitcase doesn't show up in baggage claim within 5 minutes of touching down I am going to tweet about how terrible this airline is' age of the social media enabled customer, the demands for service and performance of this clown role (that you can't fill) are just getting worse.

Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon I think, you will have to face the same kinds of challenges that are facing the circuses. 

What are you going to do to prepare for when (Insert whatever it is your company does) isn't cool anymore?

The three keys to success on the crew

I had a really fun and interesting couple of days this week at the IBM Connect event in Orlando, a pretty large and diverse event that showcases many of the technologies and ideas from what is a large and diverse company.

Amongst all the showy elements, (an opening mini-concert by the band American Authors and a short comedy set from SNL's Seth Meyers), and the deep dive sessions that focused on collaborative, social, and talent management technologies, I thought the most fascinating part of the show was a short meeting with one of the IBM/Kenexa customers, who shared some elements of her company's recruiting challenges, and how they were responding to these challenges.

The company in question, AMC Theaters, is a large operator of movie theaters in the US, (possibly elsewhere, I am not sure if that came up at all in the conversation), and like most high location high volume retail/service companies has to recruit for many thousands of front-line and entry level positions each year. In the case of AMC, each year means about 17,000 or so new hires for these front-line or 'crew' positions. Efficiently hiring that many folks is not simple, and presents any organization a number of problems. But for AMC, applicant volume is not one of them - with an estimated 750,000 applications for these 17,000 positions coming in annually. For these jobs AMC does not really have to 'recruit', they have to 'select'.

So when AMC set about making changes to the process in order to improve efficiency, ease the burden on theater management, and improve hiring outcomes, there was and is certainly a pretty large 'technology' component. You can't process that many people/positions without a solid tech foundation. But you also don't really get any better at hiring simply by organizing it more effectively in an ATS, you have to actually get better at hiring. And AMC was able to do that, again supported certainly by technology, by breaking down to three elements what it takes to be successful in one of these 'crew' positions. If you possess these three keys, then you were far more likely to be successful on the crew, to stick around longer, and would help drive improvements on the key metrics that AMC tracks.

According to AMC the three keys are that you are friendly, dependable, and you have some ability to sell. They test/screen applicants for these elements up front, (again assisted by technology tools that have helped them develop and validate the tests), give theater managers insight into a given applicant's test results in order to help shape areas to focus on during interviews, and finally make interview and hiring decisions based at least partly on them.

What was interesting to me was their ability to distill all the myriad attributes that could potentially contribute (or detract) from job performance into these three identifiable and validated elements. If you can do that, then you don't really have to waste candidates, recruiters, or hiring managers time trying to discern other nuances of a candidate's background ('So, tell me why you don't have a position listed on your resume from April 2012 to January 2013?'), or trying to teach interviewers some kind of personality assessment parlor tricks.

I dig the approach that AMC has taken towards improving the process for hiring 17,000 front-line workers, many of which have little to no 'real' work experience to draw from. As they have found out, it is likely that the previous experience, or lack or it, doesn't really matter that much anyway. If someone is friendly, dependable, and can sell a little bit, well then they have a good shot at success on the crew. 

And I left the meeting wondering if applying the 'What are the three keys for success on this job?' would make all kinds of hiring/screening challenges easier.

I'm wondering how much time we spend in the hiring process trying to determine the presence or lack of qualities that ultimately, don't matter much at all.

Thanks to the folks at IBM for inviting me down to IBM Connect!