HR Happy Hour - Live from ERE Expo

The ERE Expo is a fantastic event in the corporate recruiting space, and I am really pleased to be a part of the program once again. Today and tomorrow I will be hosting the web livestream from the show in San Diego, California.  

The event itself is three days of workshops, keynotes, concurrent sessions, and great opportunities to network with industry leaders, as well as to meet with and learn more from many of the leading solution providers in the Recruiting technology and services space. This will be my third time doing the HR Happy Hour-style interviews live from the event, and it continues to be a fun and interesting program, and is a testament to ERE's commitment to make much of the conference content accessible to everyone, regardless if they are able to attend in person.

Starting today at approximately 8:00AM Pacific Time, you can tune in to the livestream directly from the link on the ERE.net home page.

Over the course of this Thursday and Friday, and ably accompanied by ERE's own Lance Haun, we will welcome a series of recruiting industry leaders, recruiting practitioners, and Expo speakers, (and more), to talk about recruiting, talent management, new technology, and beyond.  And of course this is all in addition to the live coverage of the event keynotes and featured sessions from the mainstage.

So if you are at all interested in the world of recruiting, the issues (and potential solutions), facing many of your industry peers today, and overall want to get the ERE Expo experience from the comfort of your office (or sofa), I hope you will tune in to some or all of the live cast over the next two days.

Many thanks to everyone at ERE for having the HR Happy Hour Show once again be a part of the event.

And if you are in San Diego this week make sure you come by the set and say hello!

Retain Your Talent by Alienating the Industry

In last week's installment of Silicon Valley tech company drama...

You might of caught some reports of Yahoo! and its suit against social networking behemoth Facebook, alleging that the world's most popular social site has largely been built on ten separate Yahoo! patents. Some color on the Yahoo! contention from the linked ars technica piece above:

Yahoo claims Facebook infringes patents related to online advertising, privacy, Web customization, social networking, and messaging.

Yahoo's complaint does not allege that Facebook directly copied Yahoo's products. Rather, Yahoo appears to have claimed broad categories of website functionality, which Facebook may have infringed by accident in the process of building its own website.

The lawsuit illustrates how patents are becoming a significant barrier to entry for new firms in the software industry. Given how many patents Yahoo has, and how broad they are, it's hard to see how Facebook could have avoided infringing them. And, of course, Yahoo is far from the only software incumbent with a large portfolio of broad patents.

But until recently, there was a tacit agreement among major software firms not to sue competitors for patent infringement. All firms recognized that a full-scale patent war would be ruinous for the industry. But that gentlemen's agreement began to break down in the heat of competition in the mobile market. And now the patent wars seem to be spreading beyond the mobile market to the software industry more generally.

Apologies for repeating so much of the ars technica piece, but I think the context is needed to better understand and form an opinion on a follow-on development stemming from the Yahoo! suit, that is, the potential detrimental impact it might have on the Yahoo! employees, not the leaders and execs, but the rank and file talent, that almost certainly have nothing to do with their company's decision to pursue these patent claims.

For shortly after the news broke about the Yahoo! suit, many observers, leaders, and media that cover the tech industry began expressing disappointment, rage, and even fake support that Yahoo! would pursue these claims.  And if outrage over Yahoo's decisions to file this suit, a rival tech CEO, David Sacks of the enterprise collaboration vendor Yammer, took aim at not only Yahoo! leadership, but really everyone working at Yahoo!.

First Sacks opined via a Tweet that Yahoo! could be stopped by blackballing it's staff, effectively creating a kind of rebellion or groundswell inside of Yahoo that, in theory, might make the company back off these claims against Facebook. 

Silicon Valley can stop Yahoo: simply declare that any employee still there in 60 days is blackballed forever. We don't hire patent trolls.

— David Sacks (@DavidSacks) March 14, 2012

Later Sacks committed his company to this ostracizing of Yahoo! staff strategy: 

I'm declaring it: Yammer will never hire another former Yahoo employee who doesn't leave in the next 60 days. Who will join me? #stopyahoo

— David Sacks (@DavidSacks) March 14, 2012

And finally, Sacks upped the ante by offering a $25,000 signing bonus to any Yahoo! employee who jumps ship from Yahoo! and joins Yammer in the next 60 days:

I'm pleased to announce a $25,000 signing bonus for any Yahoo employee who joins Yammer in the next 60 days. yammer.com/jobs

— David Sacks (@DavidSacks) March 15, 2012

If you are an employee of Yahoo! what you think about the patent lawsuit almost doesn't matter - leadership of just about every company makes decisions that are potentially unpopular with the industry and possibly their own employees from time to time. That's just business in the real world. But it is a little unusual for a company's strategy and tactics to directly impact not only the employee's current job security, (bad decisions leading to bad results leading to cutbacks), but also their prospects for future outside employment in the industry. 

While it seems like Sacks' comments are mostly about drawing attention to the core issue, i.e., the validity and propriety of the patent suit, the addition of the blackball threats and then the bounty directed at the average Yahoo! employee makes the story at least a little more interesting. From the perspective of the employee, it is certainly one thing for management to make an unpopular decision, but it is another thing entirely if those decisions jeopardize your future.

The Yahoo!/Facebook/Yammer story is yet to play out, and my suspicion is the suit will go away, as Facebook doesn't need the distraction in the run-up to their IPO, and soon thereafter, (if not before), Sacks comments will be mostly forgotten as well. Sure, maybe Yammer will nab some talent from Yahoo! in the next two months, but if Sacks' idea for an industry-wide blackball of Yahoo! employees ever did take hold, then Yahoo! will have other problems to deal with besides negative public opinion about the lawsuit.

They'll have to answer to a group of pretty upset employees that have suddenly found not only their current jobs under pressure, but their future prospects compromised through association. And if that were to happen, well, that won't be good for anyone.

What do you think - have you ever refused to consider a candidate based simply on where they have worked in the past? 

How much do you know about your industry?

Another great 'Corner Office' column from the New York Times this past weekend, this one an interview with Jim Whitehurst, president and chief executive of Red Hat, the provider of Linux and other open-source technologies.  As is typical in the Corner Office series of CEO and executive interviews, writer Adam Bryant asked Whitehurst about recruiting. Have a look at Whitehurt's take on what questions he likes to ask prospective candidates -

Bryant - Let’s shift to hiring. What questions do you ask? How would you interview me, for example, if I were in your office?

Whitehurst - I would be all over you about understanding the economics of the newspaper business — where it’s been, where it’s going, what do you see as the future of it? How is The New York Times positioned? Because I want to know if you have enough innate curiosity, and analytical and conceptual skills, to be able to frame strategically where you stand. And a lot of it is about discovering if you are curious enough to care and want to know. Because I don’t want somebody working for me who doesn’t care, right? To me, it also signals that the person isn’t in it just for himself or herself. Are they really going to be a team player?

If you’re really trying to understand the whole business and you’ve thought about it and you clearly have opinions around it, that says you’re not spending 100 percent of your time just making sure you nail your own job. It means you’ve clearly had to build relationships and talk to other people within the company. So I think that’s a real telltale sign.

Steve comment -  I really like this take, as the answer to this kind of question can be really telling and indicate how engaged and interested the candidate is about what he or she does, and the larger economic and competitive environment in their industry. It pushes the candidate off of 'Let me tell you more about me', which is what most of us who sit in interviews are prepared to discuss. 

More from the Times piece, as in the follow-up question Whitehurst pokes holes in traditional and behavioral interviewing approaches - 

Bryant - It’s an interesting bank shot to get insights about someone.

Whitehurst - It is indirect. Here’s what I find: If you ask the traditional questions — things like “Tell me about a situation where you failed” or “Tell me about a situation where you were particularly collaborative” — most people have answers that really come off as scripted.

Steve comment -  Again, asking questions that the candidate already knows are coming, (most of the 'Tell me about a time..' ones), can sometimes slip into well-rehearsed, coached, and crafted responses that don't do all that much to help gain insight and even more importantly, to draw distinctions across candidates. I am not saying these kinds of questions should not be used at all, but rather that since in a way they are telegraphed, that digging into some more broad conversations about bigger and larger issues can be more telling and instructive as you compare the various candidate responses.

Now I imagine the kinds of positions and candidates that a CEO like Whitehurst is personally interviewing are for more senior or executive roles, and these more big picture and strategic type questions seem more appropriate. But I think they could make sense at deeper levels of the organization as well, particularly in an age where the next great big idea might come from anywhere in the organization.

What do you think, do you ever ask candidates about the economics and the strategies of your industry?

Anticipated Regret and Chasing a Sure Thing

Finally, the 24/7 Jeremy Lin is dying down somewhat. A combination of LeBron, Dwayne and the rest of the Miami Heat laying a bit of a smackdown and sending a message to Lin and the Knicks, along with the mid-season All Star break, have combined to (mercifully), let the #Linsanity fall off the radar in the last few days. It is hard to know how the rest of the season will play out for Lin; the Miami game showed opposing teams are now well aware of his game, his tendencies, and have adapted their strategies to counter the elements that Lin has brought to the Knicks in the last few weeks. Lin is a smart and talented player though, and most observers think that while he is unlikely to continue scoring 20 or 25 points a night, he should continue to develop into a quality starting point guard, hopefully filling a glaring hole in the Knicks lineup.The next sure thing

But over 100 words in, this post isn't actually about Lin, at least not directly. As I spent some time this weekend reading many of the articles and posts about #Linsanity that I had bookmarked during the last two weeks, this piece from Wired, 'What Jeremy Lin Teaches Us About Talent' stuck out, not so much for the origniality of the take - that often we aren't very good at recognizing talent when it is right under our noses, but rather for one of the references in the piece, to a 2010 paper called 'The Loser's Curse: Overconfidence vs. Market Efficiency in the National Football League', by Cade Massey and Richard Thaler.

The Massey/Thaler paper examines over two decades of National Football League draft results, compares player draft position to demonstrated performance once the drafted players enter the league, and eventually makes several interesting conclusions about the success in evaluation of potential players by NFL talent evaluators. Chief among these conclusions is that despite ridiculous amounts of easily discoverable demonstrated performance results, (video of draft candidate's college games), detailed and specific pre-draft assessment testing, and years of experience at their jobs, that NFL talent professionals are only slightly better at choosing between any two players than simply flipping a coin - higher drafted players outperform lower drafted players only 52% of the time.

The paper goes on to recommend that based on analysis of the performance of players selected in the draft that 'trading down', e.g. swapping say a team's 1st round selection in the draft, for multiple lower round selections, perhaps for additional 2nd and 3rd round picks, is usually a better strategy than holding on to that high pick, particularly when, as the authors contend, the likelihood of superior outcomes produced by multiple lower round picks is quite high. Essentially, they argue, that NFL teams overvalue high draft picks, a condition only exacerbated by the fact that these high draft picks usually are well known players, and fan and media pressure for teams to select these known quantity 'sure thing' players is really high.

Why do teams often hold on to these high picks, and irrationally chase these sure things? The paper offers the concept of 'anticipated regret', or the idea that missing out on a player, that they had a chance to select, only to see him succeed with another team, is just too painful for teams to stomach, and they feel they have to exercise draft rights on such a player, even when the data suggest that, over time, they'd probably be better off passing, and trading down to accumulate more lower picks.

In the NFL and other sports, anticipated regret is all too real, since the actual performance of players not selected by a given team is all to available. Deciding not to select a highly touted player that turns out to be a star for another team, can often become an albatross, weighing a team down for years, (see Trail Blazers, Portland).

Back in the real world though, anticipated regret does not play into corporate talent evaluation and recruiting all that much. Candidates that we pass on usually head off to parts unknown, and if we do know what becomes of them, we rarely have insight into performance details at whatever endeavor they pursue. We know how the person we did select worked out of course, but that extra bit of information, how the person(s) we passed on turned out, well we can only guess at that.

Which is kind of too bad I think. Because I think we would all get better at evaluating talent if we could see the full picture, not just how the person we hired worked out, but how the ones we didn't hire ended up. Because if we keep missing, well then maybe we'd change our approach, maybe we'd be willing to trade down from time to time, instead of always chasing the sure thing.

Skip the Assessment and Head Over to Facebook

I'm going to submit this one without much comment, I'd rather you, the gentle readers, think about it's relevance, accuracy, and relative importance for hiring, job seeking, and for the million, (billion?), dollar industry that provided employment screening, background checking, and various other pre-employment services.

Dateline: Chicago

Headline:  'Facebook and Job Performance: New study finds social networking site profile pages can be an indicator of future job success.'

The Chicago Tribune article describing the findings of a Northwestern University study, led by Management Professor Donald Kluemper, that attempted to test the theory that quick, 10-minute scans of a job candidate's Facebook profile would be a better indicator of eventual job performance than the typical behavioral and IQ tests that many companies administer as part of the screening process.

What did the study find?

From the Trib piece:

"Hiring specialists were just trying to eliminate someone who was doing something inappropriate," Kluemper said. "What we did is try to assess the personality traits in a similar way that they might be assessed by a standardized test."

Several "raters" were given two hours of training on how to evaluate a Facebook page and answer specific questions relating to personality. They would then spend five to 10 minutes evaluating pages; a total of 274 were reviewed.

This excerpt from the study shows the type of indicators they were looking for:

"Those high in agreeableness are trusting and get along well with others, which may be represented in the extensiveness of personal information posted. Openness to experience is related to intellectual curiosity and creativity, which could be revealed by the variety of books, favorite quotations or other posts showing the user engaged in new activities and creative endeavors. Extroverts more frequently interact with others, which could be represented by the number of SNW (social networking websites) friends a user has."

The researchers followed up with the job candidates after six months and got performance reviews from the supervisors of 69 of them, about 25 percent of the original group. Across the board, the study found that these relatively quick Facebook evaluations more accurately predicted success than standard tests. 

Interesting. For this, admittedly small, set of candidates/new hires scanning Facebook profiles for 10 minutes and drawing conclusions from those reviews turned out to be a better predictor of job success than the usual tests and screens. 

I said at the start I would submit this without comment, so I will, but I'd like to offer one question to folks that read this and have a stake in the sourcing, screening, assessing, and hiring game.

And that is this - since scores of people (candidates), today freely and willingly offer up so much of themselves online and on social networking sites I wonder if the primary challenge to candidate sourcing, screening, etc. in the future is figuring out the best way to evaluate and interpret this data in a way that does not run afoul of the myriad laws and regulations associated with hiring, but also provides an accurate, predictable, and reliable method to assess these profiles and personas against established predictors of job success.

We're mostly, (not you, I mean all those other talent pros), using Facebook and Twitter to screen people out. To look for those 'gotcha' updates or pictures and when we find them, we like to get all smug and superior and talk with our friends about those jerky Gen Y'ers that don't realize that social media is hurting their job prospects.

More and more candidates create, publish, share, interact and make available so much more information about themselves, their curiousity and creativity yet we still write (boring) articles advising candidates about resume formats and cover letters. 

Can't we do even just a little better than that?

What do you think, does this study actually mean anything for assessing candidates? Or would you rather play it safe and keep arguing over how many pages a resume should be?