Can you text Hollywood Henderson and ask him?

This post probably is silly and doesn't have a relevant point or connection back to anything, but I don't really care, it was interesting to me.

Here's the backstory. On a cross-country flight recently I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, the Adam Carolla show.  Adam had on as a guest the sports and entertainment broadcaster Pat O'Brien, who has had a long career hosting various sports telecasts and entertainment-themed shows. As Adam's show generally bounces around seemingly at random from topic to topic, at one point in the conversation with O'Brien, Adam wondered aloud whether or not the former Dallas Cowboys football player Hollywood Henderson had actually won the Texas State lottery on two separate occasions. The general consensus was that Henderson had definitely won the jackpot once, but Adam was sure he had heard at some point that Henderson has won twice.Do you have his number?

It probably would have just ended there, maybe someone off mic would have Googled for the answer, and that would have been that. But after a minute O'Brien asked 'Do you want me to text Hollywood and ask him?'

Adam was kind of dumb struck at that point - 'You actually have Hollywood Henderson's number?'

Note: for non-sports fans, Hollywood Henderson is not really a household name. He had a brief run of success in the NFL, but then burned out quickly, and all that was at least 30 years ago.

O'Brien replied kind of matter-of-factly - 'Sure, why not? I hosted sports shows all over the country for years. It's my job to know people and to be able to find information.' O'Brien then did text Henderson, and Hollywood even responded. It was all pretty funny and then the show and conversation moved on.

But I couldn't stop thinking about the entire exchange between the two. About the really obscure nature of the question - 'You have Hollywood Henderson's number?' and the assuredness of the reply.

I wonder if that kind of situation, or a version or variation thereof, would make sense in more traditional interview scenarios. Mostly when interviewees are asked to solve a problem, they usually just talk about solving it, or describe a time when they actually did attempt to solve a similar problem. Sometimes in technical interviews, candidates do have to demonstrate a 'live' problem solve, but for most of the rest of us, it is not usually done that way. I mean, if you were interviewing for an HR job, the CHRO generally doesn't make you do a live employee intervention to see how you handle it.

Well, I suppose I am meandering on about nothing (shocking) but something about the story resonated. I think the next time I find myself interviewing someone I am going to try and pull a 'Henderson'. I'm going to think of a person that the interviewee really should know, that would be a valuable resource to them, and that is just famous or well-known enough to be a little bit of a reach, but not so famous as to be unreachable, if that makes sense.

Then I will ask them flat-out, 'Can you text Tim Sackett and ask him?'

#HRHappyHour 164 PODCAST - 'The 8 Man Rotation Takes on Rutgers'

HR Happy Hour 164 - 'The 8 Man Rotation Takes on Rutgers'

This week in what can only be called a very special HR Happy Hour, the entire 8 Man Rotation crew - Kris Dunn, Tim Sackett, Lance Haun, Matt 'akaBruno' Stollak, and Steve Boese take a deep dive into the Rutgers University hiring, firing, and public relations disasters of recent months.

From an abusive men's basketball coach, to internal university and state government politics, to a high-profile new hire that may have some skeletons in her closet - the series of stories that have emerged from the banks of the old Raritan have provided almost a perfect series of case studies on the intersection of sports and HR.

An no one is better equipped to talk sports, HR, and what it means for the HR and Talent pro than the 8 Man Rotation crew. So check out the podcast as our team breaks down the Rutgers situation and offers some insights about what it means for your shop.

You can listen to the show on the show page here, using the widget player below, and of course on iTunes or Stitcher radio (for you smartphone types), just search the podcast area for 'HR Happy Hour'.

Listen to internet radio with Steve Boese on BlogTalkRadio

Thanks to KD, Tim, Lance, and Matt for jumping in to the conversation on very short notice.

NOTE:

Finally, for listeners of the show a quick reminder. For the next little while anyway, co-host Trish McFarlane and I will be doing the HR Happy Hour Shows more as a traditional podcast - recorded in advance, perhaps a little shorter than the live shows were, and hopefully posted to the site every other week. With our schedules and lots of travel on the horizon this year, doing the shows 'live' on Thursday nights has become increasingly challenging. Trish and I hope that by changing how the shows are produced it will allow us the opportunity to continue doing the show/podcast in a way that will work with our schedules as well as our future guests.

Have a great weekend!

#HRHappyHour 162 PODCAST - 'RPO and Talent in 2013'

This week the HR Happy Hour Show/Podcast is back with a fresh episode recorded earlier this week -'RPO and Talent in 2013' with guest John Wilson, Founder and CEO of the RPO firm WilsonHCG (you can follow John on Twitter as well - @wilsonceo).

It was a fascinating conversation with John - as the founder and CEO of a leading RPO firm, he had lots of particular insight around the key talent acquisition challenges facing all kinds of organizations today. John shared some interesting and relevant ideas about how organizations are having success in today's competitive enviroment, how much (or little) companies are looking to temporary or contingent markets to find talent, and when and why RPO makes sense or is a good fit for an organization.

You can listen to the show on the show page here, using the widget player below, and of course on iTunes - just search the podcasts area for 'HR Happy Hour'.

Listen to internet radio with Steve Boese on BlogTalkRadio

 

In a HR Happy Hour Show from earlier in 2013, industry legend and thought leader Gerry Crispin talked about the increased use of RPO by small and midsize firms to be one of the most important trends to look for in talent acquisition in the next 1-3 years. As Gerry described then, and as you will John talk about as well, when done right, RPO arrangements do offer customer organizations a compelling mix of service, access to technology, and understanding of broader industry and market trends that can certainly augment internal recruting teams. So check out the podcast, let me know what you think and please connect with John as well.

Thanks to John and the folks at WilsonHCG for taking the time this week - and a shout-out to HR Happy Hour Show co-host Trish McFarlane, who was on the road this week and could not make the show.

NOTE:

Finally, for listeners of the show a quick reminder. For the next little while anyway, Trish and I will be doing the HR Happy Hour Shows more as a traditional podcast - recorded in advance, perhaps a little shorter than the live shows were, and hopefully posted to the site every other week. With our schedules and lots of travel on the horizon this year, doing the shows 'live' on Thursday nights has become increasingly challenging. Trish and I hope that by changing how the shows are produced it will allow us the opportunity to continue doing the show/podcast in a way that will work with our schedules as well as our future guests.

Have a great weekend!

Big Oil and BYOD as a recruiting strategy

This short article, 'Shell plans to move 135,000 staff to BYOD' about the internal IT strategy at the giant Shell Oil company in about 300 words manages to highlight probably the two most significant trends driving big enterprise IT today.

Trend #1 - The Cloud (and it is kind of past calling this a 'trend' anymore, it's now just reality.

  From the Shell piece:

Two years ago, the firm adopted a cloud-first policy, which means that any new applications have to be in the cloud unless there is a business case for them to be on-premise.

Trend #2 - BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) - the tendency of employees wanting to use their device of choice to accomplish their work, rather than being forced into some kind of corporate device standard that often is inferior to the technology they prefer to use in their 'real' lives.  Again Shell's take on BYOD:

Shell is undertaking a huge bring your own device (BYOD) project which will see it supporting around 135,000 devices picked by users rather than dictated by the IT department. The BYOD scheme is a major undertaking. Shell has 90,000 permanent employees, and an additional 60,000 on a contract basis so the company is managing 150,000 clients, from desktops to portables to tablets. 

Part of the decision for the BYOD drive is around recruitment and staffing. “In about five to 10 years, 50 percent of our staff worldwide will retire,” (Shell's) Mann explained.“We’re going to have a lot of people turning over, and we want to be able to attract and retain talented and young staff. They don’t want to come into a locked corporate environment.

Neither of these decisions by Shell is really all that newsworthy excepting for the fact that these same IT strategies and philosophies were until fairly recently only undertaken by smaller firms and start-ups. When massive, entrenched, and hierarchical industrial titans like Shell start sounding like 15-person tech start-ups, you know that there really is no turning back. Big companies might not hold sway over how a technology achieves popularity in the macro-sense, but their signing on to a given IT approach tends to validate what the market is saying on a smaller scale.

Also, I don't know for sure if the recruiting angle to the BYOD strategy at Shell  is really that important or not - while I tend to agree that people don't want to use inferior equipment in the workplace, I don't think that point of view is limited to 'young' people. (Anyone reading this that is doing at least some of their 'work' email in Gmail because their corporate Outlook mailbox keeps going over capacity will be nodding in agreement right now). And while using lousy technology at work does kind of stink, I also think lots of people want to keep their personal technology, well, personal. 

Not everyone wants to be reading work email on their iPad when they are chilling on the sofa at night.

Right?

The Applicant Tracking Number

Last week I had a post about the limited differential and competitive advantage that most companies can realize from the implementation of commercial off the shelf software solutions that are readily available (and often implemented) by their rivals as well. The premise was (and still is) that if and when all the largest firms in an industry segment implement the same ERP or Supply Chain or Applicant Tracking System, then it is generally likely that none of them will have executed so much better than their competitors that they gain a meaningful advantage.  What would an application history look like?

The point of the piece was that real and lasting advantage and long-term value comes from actually using technology to create something entirely new and not easily reproducible by competitors or by the software companies themselves, that would just try and sell this innovation to all the firms in the space. The example I used to try and make this point was the FedEx shipment tracking number - the concept, the associated software and hardware, and the popularization as both an internally and externally valuable data point that was pioneered by the shipping firm over the last few decades. With the package tracking number suddenly the shipping business was transformed - every concerned stakeholder could know the current status and history of every package at all times. Amazing.

Why revisit last week's post? 

Because in the comments the Recruiting Animal made a tremendous observation, (repeated below)

Steve, are you saying that big companies should give applicants a tracking number for their resumes? Sounds like a great idea.

I actually wasn't thinking about a tracking number for applicants, similar to the FedEx shipment tracking number, but it is an obviously great idea from Animal. Sure, most ATS at this point provide a way for applicants to log in and get a 'status' about the state of their application, and some even provide email notifications about status changes, but these are almost never as detailed and informative as they could be. They will let an applicant now their application is 'received' or they are in 'first interview' status or if it is 'no longer being considered', but those statuses or stages can be pretty broad and vague.

But what actually happens to an application is much more rich, detailed, and nuanced. Applicants are screened, they are reviewed by potentially a dozen people, and for varying amounts of time. Their details are forwarded, they are classified or tagged. Then if they interview, notes are taken about them and shared. References may be called and a background check might be done. These processes will sometimes kick off more notes, tags, and internal conversations. An offer could be extended, a counter offer made, and additional data points created.  You get the idea, in an active and thorough process lots more data is created than what is shared (and not even always shared), with applicants.

But if as Recruiting Animal suggests, a job application had a tracking number similar to the FedEx shipment number, and the organization was brave enough to make the applicant tracking data visible and available to applicants, then questions, doubt, and the basics of candidate feedback would be solved. Just like you know where your books from Amazon are at any point in the process, and who participated in the process, and how long it took for each step, an applicant tracking number could let the applicant know when their resume was opened and reviewed and forwarded. The applicant would now truly know how long from the time of resume submission to when their credentials were even assessed, and how long after that the first critical 'Yes/No' decision was taken by the recruiter.

Remember the famous 'recruiters look at a resume for 6 seconds' story? Well with an applicant tracking number potentially we'd really know how true that was.

They would know just about everything they would want to about the process. And all it would take would be a clever application of a new kind of tracking number technology - meant for candidates and not just stuff bought online.

What do you think? Does anyone actually do something like this today?

Or is it too transparent for most organizations to consider?