What technical talent thinks about your job descriptions

I wanted to point out a super piece last week on the Smashing Magazine blog, (a site about and for Web Designers), titled 'The Difference Between Good and Bad Job Requirements', that provides a great look into what technical, (and often hard to find) talent thinks about the typical job descriptions they encounter online.

Long story short - it is clear that the Web Designer that authored the post, and almost all of the 50+ commenters, don't have very many positive things to say about how most design job descriptions are presented.  Their chief complaints - most job postings contain a ridiculously long laundry list of technical skills and acronyms that are just not relevant for the job being posted, and are almost impossible for a single individual to possess with any level of mastery.  Additionally, most job ads focused to a large degree, (if not exclusively), about what things a candidate should have already done, not what things they will actually do on the new job, and how they might grow and develop professionally. Lastly, the piece takes a few shots at job ads that in trying to paint a realistic picture of their workplace culture, perhaps go too far with statements like, 'Candidate will need to perform effectively in a demanding environment and show resiliency to stress.'  

Wow, where can I sign up?

There are several excellent pieces of advice for writing more effective technical job ads from the author as well as from many of the commenters, but the best line from the piece, and one that has applicability to recruting advertising for any field is this comment, when assessing a job ad that was much more positive and effective:

What they do is so much more than just telling you what you should have already done by now. They’re telling you what you could become working for them.

That is a key point, one I think we overlook all the time.  It continues to assume it is an employer's market, and while that may be true in some regions and fields, it certainly is not true in others, certainly for any roles you are having a hard time in filling.

Some final words of advice from the piece that I think are worth remembering in our continuing quest to attract the best talent for our organizations: 

We all understand it’ll be hard work and that we’re supposed to be good at it. So try not to tell us what your ideal employee is. Try to tell us what a great designer we could become should we want to join your team.

It's not always about you, the employer.  Sometimes, and maybe more often than you think, it is about them.

Have a great week everyone!

Mapping the ideal candidate

Don't worry - this isn't a political post...  

Just a quick take for one for an Election Day, then we can get back to riling each other up on Facebook.

I wanted to share this excellent mind map found on the Nordstrom Innovation Lab careers page.  Titled ''What We Want in a Teammate", the mind map is an interesting and novel way for an organization to attempt to communicate what they see are the important traits, characteristics, and behaviors in theor organization.

Pretty cool, right?  And while I admit to not actually visiting the careers page of every organization in the world, I will state unequivocally that this is the first 'Candidate Profile Mind Map' I have ever seen.

The Nordstrom Innovation Lab describes itself as "a lean startup operating inside of Nordstrom" and as a place where "We move through ideas quickly, using whichever technologies make sense. Our process incorporates methodologies and practices from Design Thinking, Lean Startup, agile, and lean thinking."

I don't know much else about the Innovation Lab, including if indeed they are very innovative at all, but I do think it is a smart idea for an older organization in a seemingly un-sexy industry, (retailing), to try and position themselves on their careers site as a place not at all like most potential candidates would expect.

What do you think - is creating a Mind Map of the ideal candidate a good idea?

Could you create one for your organization if you tried?

Note: This Lifehacker piece from a couple of years back has links to several free Mind Mapping tools in case you are interested in playing around with these ideas.

The Last HR Pro not on LinkedIn

Last week I had a chance to present to a great group of about 100 or so HR, Talent, and Recruiting professionals at a local SHRM event in Virginia. I like getting to these kinds of local HR gatherings - they provide a much better view into the real concerns and challenges in the HR trenches, and usually are bereft of the collection of often jaded and a little too smug and ironically detached, 'professional' conference attendees. Sure, I get it, you are sick of hearing the 71st talk on 'Why Social Media is Important for HR', but in case you have not realized it, actually attending the same presentation dozens of times at events all over the country make you the one who is a little weird and out of the mainstream, not the HR pro at a 300-person company that is trying to figure out how, if at all, having a Twitter account will help her get her job done.

But back to the point - at the session where I was talking to the group about changes and trends in workforce technologies, naturally the use of the public, or consumer social networking sites was brought up, I think in the expected context of how they are being used for various aspects of the talent acquisition function. I asked the attendees to share some examples of how they are incorporating these networks in their organizations, and a few folks shared what they were doing to share job openings and company information on Facebook and source candidates on LinkedIn. Nothing unusual here, a few attendees, (maybe 10% of the group), had some 'active', (not just trolling for candidates), activity on social networks, but what was interesting to me was as the conversation continued, one audience member told the group she had never created a personal LinkedIn profile. I pressed her as to why she was not on LinkedIn, and she promptly replied, 'I just don't have time for it. I'm busy'. I jokingly suggested she was the last HR pro not on LinkedIn.

The group continued to discuss both social networking and other kinds of new technologies that are impacting the workplace and the practice of HR, but I could not get out of my head that in late 2012, there was still one smart, engaged, (she took the time to attend a professional development and networking event), and experienced HR/Talent pro that had not found her way to LinkedIn, if nothing else to set up a shell profile on the site. I even came back to her a couple of times later in the session when the conversation shifted to mobile technology, and how the usage patterns in consumer tech are effecting enterprise tech, I think my comment was 'You are all on your iPhones, updating your Facebook and checking out who has viewed your LinkedIn page, well except for you, (giving a mock-disgusted look towards the one LinkedIn holdout).'

The point of all this? 

I guess a couple of things stood out after thinking about it a little longer.  One, there still exists a pretty significant knowledge and value perception gap between most of the front line, working HR professionals and those of us that think about and use new technologies every day.  There are really still very few 'real' HR pros out there that are as obsessed with this stuff, as it just does not move the needle for them on their day-to-day. Two, while participation and use of these social technologies might level the playing field to some extent between larger and better-financed organizations and smaller ones, that effect is limited. A couple of audience members from very large organizations shared what they are doing with social and branded talent communities, a level of commitment and effort that simply can't be approached by smaller companies.

Last, and maybe the only fascinating part of this entire post, is that after taking some good-natured ribbing from me, (and even the presenter that followed me), the HR pro who had been the one LinkedIn holdout approached me at the end of the day to let me know that she would be, after all, setting up a LinkedIn profile when she got home.

Good for her!

And bad for you, the 'savvy' HR pro who is all over social media and social networking - that is one more competitor for talent that you have to worry about.

Have a Great Week!

Buying a car, choosing your next job - more similar than you think

The good folks at Careerbuilder recently released their 2012 Candidate Behavior Study, conducted in partnership with Inavero, and while the big, catchy conclusion from the study was boiled down to essentially read as 'Passive Candidates Don't Exist', I found even a more interesting, (to me anyway), finding from the study's data.

According to the Careebuilder study, job candidates consult nearly 15 resources per job search, including company career sites, Facebook, online job boards, employer review sites (such as Glassdoor.com), professional and personal networks and staffing and recruiting firms – before they even decide to apply to a job. Below is a chart from the study showing how job search research stacks up against other, similarly important and complex purchasing decisions:

Job Searching is complex

While we have been talking for a while, (here just last Monday), about Human Resources and Recruiting looking and acting more like the classic Marketing function, but as I pointed out in my post last week, and the Careerbuilder study reinforces, Marketing is changing dramatically as well, making, especially for HR and Talent pros, the shift to more of a Marketing mindset even more challenging.

From the report on the study's findings:

It used to be that a consumer would go to the store and find something on the shelf for the first time and make the decision to purchase right then and there,” (Careerbuilder's) Barnes explains. “Today, however, thanks to technology that enables us to research and compare products – at any time of day, from anywhere – consumers are doing significant research on products before they even step into a store.

Job candidates, we’re finding, are using this same approach to their job search.” For employers, these findings underscore the need to put as much effort into “marketing” their job opportunities and employment brand as they do their products, services and consumer brand. Candidates are utilizing multiple platforms to interact with employers, search for opportunities and find out what it’s like to work at companies – and they’re doing so increasingly through social media and from their mobile devices.

That means employers need to explore and take advantage of the many and various opportunities to connect with candidates these platforms afford.

Some quick thoughts on what this all might mean for you - the HR and Talent pro that might feel themselves in a position not at all unlike our friends over at a Big Box retailer like Best Buy, who watch shopper after shopper wander around the store, viewing and touching the merch, then immediately pulling out their iPhones to price check all over the internet, read product reviews, and figure out if their might be a better deal out there.

1. You probably don't need to everywhere, but you need to be moving in that direction. If your candidates are hitting up as many as 15 sources of informaton to learn about your company and jobs, then having a wide (and deep) employer brand presence across multiple sources.

2. True source of hire will become almost impossible to pinpoint. The candidate you eventually hired saw your opening via a job alert from Indeed, talked to a friend who used to work at your company, read some reviews on Glassdoor, checked out your Career site, then found someone in their LinkedIn network willing to forward their resume to the hiring manager. So - what was the source of hire?

3. If HR and Recruiting is becoming the new Marketing, then HR pros are even more behind the game. The Careerbuilder report pulls pretty deeply from a Google-led marketing research project called the Zero Moment of Truth, (ZMOT). If you want to speak the language of the modern marketer and job seeker, then you probably need to know what the heck the ZMOT is and how it impacts your employment marketing efforts.

I don't post about too many research reports, (honestly, there are too many to post about anyway), but I did learn a few things from the Careerbuilder research, and I recommend you check it out if you want some new insights into how candidates are searching for jobs, and how you can best adopt and adapt to these changes.

Have a great Monday everyone!

'I will get in there and mix it up'

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!