Follow-up: Big Data for HR - what do you make of this?

Yesterday I took about 550 words to say essentially this : Once your CEO decides that 'Big Data' is the next big thing to upskill your organization's talent level it is on you as an HR or Talent pro to make that happen. (It was in the Times you know).

One of the ways, besides the more obvious ones like 'Invest in some new technology' or 'Take a statistics course' is to challenge yourself to starting thinking differently about information and data (and not the typical data you might be used to considering) and what it might or might not mean for your organization and your talent game.

Here's an example of what I mean pulled from a recent Business Insider piece on some data around student loan debt load and default rates by State, (and let's assume for the purposes of this exercise that college recruiting and hiring is an important part of your workforce planning).

Chart 1 - Average Student Loan Debt

Dang, that doesn't look good anywhwere, but student debt loads seem particularly high in certain states and regions. Let's take this one more step.

Chart 2 - Average Student Loan Delinquency Rates

Interesting - not perfect alignment between the states with the highest average student loan levels and the highest default rates. But nevertheless, there are some pretty large sections of the country with average default rates at 15% or more. So the exercise is this - what, if anything would or should you do with data like this, (incomplete as it is, bear with me, it's just an example to make us think).

What if you are recruiting college grads or soon-to-be grads in the parts of the country with the highest debt loads and default rates?

Would that change your approach at all to things like signing bonuses or retention schemes that have an element of student loan repayment built in?

Would you formulate a plan for more strategic counter-offers for your younger talent that is likely to be much more receptive to make a jump to a competitor for even a small bump in salary?

Would you consider overpaying in the first few years for the best college grads knowing that some or even most of them have pretty significant financial worries outside of work?

Would you make access to a financial planner or accountant part of your signing package?

Or would you do nothing at all?

The point to all this is not really the student loan data, but rather to raise just one possibility of the potential and challenge that big data holds for you as a Talent pro, and to try and illustrate that using data to your advantage is likely going to require not just technical skills, but the ability to think differently about what drives your business.

And like we established yesterday, since it hit the Times, you can't pretend it doesn't matter for much longer.

Big Data for hiring - now everyone knows, (including the CEO)

While it can be cool to say and think that old or traditional media is dead or at least dying, (witness CNN's Keystone Cops-like coverage of the Boston Bombings and their wall-to-wall coverage of the Carnival 'poop cruise', interesting only to the people on the actual ship), it is still pretty remarkable to witness, at least in our little HR and HR Tech corner of the world, the sheer power to drive conversation the big, mainstream outlets still wield.

The latest example? The NY Times piece over the weekend titled How Big Data is Playing Recruiter for Specialized Workers, that did admittedly a fine job of covering some HR Tech startups like Gild, TalentBin, and Entelo, and how data, algorithms, and smart machine learning are combining with traditional sourcing methods in attempts to help organizations make better hires faster, and less expensively than in the past.Robert Rauschenberg, Yoicks 1953

It is a good piece and I recommend you checking it out, if you follow this space at all chances are you have already read the article, as it seemed to me over the weekend everyone Tweeted out the link (I did too). Even though these solutions have been out for some time - I just wrote about Gild myself here - once news like this hits the mainstream, you can bet you'll have some explaining to do back in your office about how you and the HR organization plans to leverage this kind of data in hiring and talent management decisions. Let's face it - even though people like me have written about these new technologies, and some of them have been featured at the HR Tech Conference, it's still the rare CEO or COO that has heard about them.  

But drop a feature about these cool new technologies in the Times, on the weekend no less, when Mr. or Ms. CEO is kicking back over brunch with their iPad and has a few minutes to read and think about a piece like this - well some of you are getting an email (maybe it already arrived, 'sent from my iPad') from the CEO with the link and a question along the lines of 'What can we do with this? or 'Are we using Big Data in hiring?'

It is pretty fun to stay on top of the latest trends and catch demos or webinars from the coolest new technologies. It is also fun to be sort of 'in the know', to be the only one in your office or in your local HR community to have some insight and savvy about the latest solutions and tools. You (mostly) get respect and cred from just knowing about them. 

But that position of 'person who knows all about the technology' will only take you so far once everyone else starts catching on too - especially the C-suite types that really only take notice of something until it hits the Times of the Wall St. Journal.  And that is happening my friends.

We're coming up fast to the point where 'awareness' is simply the ante that lets you play in the game. Your bluff is about to be called, by a CEO in a fancy suit, and iPad, and a link to the Times article.

Stay thirsty my friends... 

WEBINAR: The Ultimate Guide to Mobile Recruiting

You know what niche industry is really suffering right now?

Ok, that was a dumb question, there are hundreds of possible answers, (luxury electric cars, shoe shine stands, sites trying to peddle surplus Jeremy Lin 'Knicks' gear), but the one I was going for was gossip magazines.

You know the ones I mean - National Enquirer, The Star, The Weekly World News. The rags that line every supermarket checkout counter in America.

Why are these publications feeling the squeeze lately? It's not for a lack of juicy news - heck the Kardashians alone take care of providing all the content they need. It's because while people are stuck waiting in the checkout line, when they used to scan and once in a while make an impulse buy of one of these magazines, now they are heads down on their iPhones.

Texting, Tweeting, Facebooking - whatever. The attention they used to pay to the starlet of the moment on the magazine rack is now diverted to their mobile device.

Face it - our attachment to our devices is changing everything - from gossip mags to reading news to looking for a job - and yes I just made that leap. Candidates are looking for jobs, (maybe your jobs), on their mobile devices instead of reading about the latest world's largest baby. And guess what? You probably are not ready for that.

That is why your friends over at Fistful of Talent have you covered with the latest in the FOT Webinar series - The Ultimate Guide to Mobile Recruiting, Wednesday April 24 at 1:00PM ET.

What will FOT's Kris Dunn and Jason Pankow cover?

Jason and Kris will lay down FOT’s Ultimate Guide to Mobile Recruiting, brought to you by the mobile sages at iMomentous by hitting you with the following:

A survey of the mobile recruiting landscape and the factors driving the need for HR and recruiting professionals to develop their mobile recruiting strategy.

Mobile site vs. Native App? FOT tackles the great debate, presenting scenarios of how each fit into your mobile recruiting strategy.

The five keys to enhancing your mobile recruiting strategy by capitalizing on features like quick apply, SMS, social media and QR codes

The ultimate checklist for selecting your mobile recruiting vendor, including the top questions you need to ask when vetting potential vendors

How to go beyond the optimized screen to attract top talent to your organization by incorporating video content and thought leadership into via your mobile recruiting strategy.

So what are you wating for, register here for the April installment of the FREE FOT webinar and start laying down the foundation for your mobile recruiting strategy.

As always, the FOT Webinar comes guaranteed - 60% of the time it works every time.

You're on an interview, no I mean RIGHT NOW you're on an interview

In the epic Book of Basketball by Bill Simmons,  legendary player (and failed executive) Isiah Thomas had the most compelling and profound observation about the sport. It was that the 'secret' of winning basketball wasn't about basketball at all - it was about the hundreds of other things like character, commitment, sacrifice, teamwork,  etc. that had to be present for a team to actually realize their true potential and become champions.  If you love basketball like I do, that concept sticks with you.

Much like Thomas' view that basketball wasn't really about basketball, could it be that the future of job seeking and more specifically interviewing, won't actually be about interviewing at all? Before you ask 'What the heck is he talking about?' check out what is happening, or at least starting to happen, in the high stakes recruiting world for software developers.

The San Francisco start-up Gild has created an algorithm that surfaces, evaluates, and rates software developers on the developers' public projects and code samples it finds on the web. The catch, that unlike every 'interview' or assessment typically conducted in the recruiting process, Gild is scoring developers behind the scenes. Programmers are not even aware it is happening, and don't have to give their permission.

How does this work?

Gild assembles profiles of individual developers from their contributions and activities in open-source forums and public websites. It can use formal APIs or simply “scrape” information from popular developer websites and communities. It takes all the data it can find and applies an algorithm to assign two scores, one for work quality, and one for influence in the software community.

And don't think for a moment that this kind of algorithmic-based rating will be necessarily limited to software developers. Here's more on the ambitions and potential Gild sees in this kind of approach to dynamic, always-on 'scoring' of candidates, from a recent piece in MIT's Technology Review:

For now, Gild is evaluating only software developers, whose work can often be freely found in repositories for open-source software, coder Q&A forums, and other online developer hangouts. But CEO Sheeroy Desai says that Gild hopes to bring its “talent acquisition technology” beyond the realm of software programmers, especially as more work products start to appear online.

This kind of real-time, background assessment, while being perhaps invasive or even creepy for candidates, could certainly benefit HR and Recruiters, who can check if resume details, letters of recommendation, and even 'real' interview observations seem to jibe with the Gild score. And maybe they can even use something like the Gild score to surface potential candidates that their normal assessment process would exclude - say the lack of a college degree or the requisite '5 years of progressive experience.'

Either way it seems like the approach Gild is taking is just the first step in what is to come - a world where every action, comment, blog post, tweet, etc. becomes an input into a algorithm and feeds a dynamic professional/personal profile that increasingly will be utilized as a tool into the hiring process. I'm actually ok with this, by the way.

And since we are soon approaching a world where we are ALWAYS on a job interivew, I feel I better start publicly answering some of the most common interview questions. I'll start with an easy one:

Interviewer: So tell me, what is your biggest weakness?

Me: I simply work too hard, care too much, and demand perfection out of myself and my team.

That ought to pass me on to the second-round I think.

Spring Break Rewind #5 - 'I will get in there and mix it up'

Note: It is Spring Break week here in Western New York, (for the school-age kids anyway), and while I will still be working and traveling to New York City to present at a conference, this week will be busier than most. So this week on the blog I'll be re-running some pieces from the last 12 months or so. Yes, I am being lazy. Cut me some slack. Anyway, if you are on Spring Break this week, I hope you have a great little vacation!

This piece - 'I will get in there and mix it up', originally ran in October 2012.

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What?

Another sports-themed post!

That's three this week!

Write what you know, or at least what you can reasonably pass off as knowing, some smart person once said, so yes I am wrapping up a tremendous week on the blog with a little Friday diversion, and once again it is taken from the world of sports. If you don't like it, ask for your money back :)

This story is about sports, but it is also about chasing a goal, making a commitment, and not letting other people define you, and perhaps more importantly, what you are capable of achieving. And no, it is not about the 'jump from space' guy, that guy is just crazy.

Submitted for your review, the story of 76-year-old Don Wiberg, and his attempt to land a coveted roster spot for the basketball team the Santa Cruz Warriors of NBA D-League, (the 'D' stands for 'Developmental', think of the league as a minor league feeder and place where raw talent can refine their skills to be better prepared for the NBA).

Catch the video below, (Mr. Wiberg enters at about the :50 second mark, email and RSS subscribers click through), and see if you caught the most imporant line in the clip.

So did you catch that? Here's the important part of Wiberg's assessment of his own skills:

'I can't say that I can run or jump or shoot because I can't, but for a guy who can't run or jump or shoot, I'm a decent passer, and I'll get in there and mix it up.'

Think of every job interview you've participated in, and whether as the interviewer or the interviewee, I would bet either way you'd be lucky to have such an honest presentation and assessment of a candidate's skills to be considered. It hits the 'What's your biggest weakness?' question, and simultaneously presents what the candidate will bring to the table.

And in this case what Wiberg offers may be more important to long-term success than any job-specific skills you are looking for.

Sure, in professional basketball there is only so much willingness to 'mix it up' that can compensate for a lack of basic, essential sports skills and physical requirements that a 76-year-old will just not be able to produce, but for the vast majority of the roles in our organizations those same physical skills are either not relevant, or can be learned.

And for those, that willingness to 'mix it up', might be more important than all the other skills combined.

I'm out - have a great weekend all!