Some applicants ARE awesome and can do lots of pull-ups

Recently another 'clueless applicant' tale bounced around the interwebs, this one centered around what was described by Business Insider and Forbes as 'The Worst Cover Letter in the World', so bad that the applicant was 'laughed at by everybody on Wall Street.'Give me 35

If you missed the story, and don't want to click through to the linked pieces above, here is a quick summary:

An unnamed student at New York University, applying for what was described as a summer analyst position with JP Morgan, included a cover letter that was a bit over the top, a bit long, had a couple of really kind of stupid mistakes, but mostly seemed, (at least to me), to be coming from a hard-working, positive, ambitious, and eager individual that is determined to get his career started.

You can read the full, (with personal identifiable details redacted), cover letter here, and I am sure you'll be as equally amused as Forbes, BI, and most of Wall St. was with the applicant's references to his bench press progress, 'double my bodyweight', and ability to pick up computer programming languages quickly, 'I learned a year's worth of Java in 27 days on my own.'

And if you do read the full cover letter, and the corresponding article ripping the kid for mistakes, bragging, length, and overall lack of polish and professionalism in communication, you'll probably agree with the conclusions and comments in the Forbes and BI pieces.

Ha-Ha-Ha. What a joke, what a doofus. What in the heck are they teaching kids at NYU anyway. Let's all have a good laugh at this kid who clearly doesn't get it that no one cares about how much he can bench press or how many pull-ups he can do.

Here's what I think. If I were looking to fill spots for one of these summer analyst programs, I'd bring the kid in for an interview. I know the cover letter was not technically perfect. And yes, the kid probably needs a refresher course in some basic rules and mores here. But that doesnt' take away from some important considerations as well.

Assuming the kid's grades and program of study checked out, (easy to verify), I would look at the bragging and the posturing in the letter as an indication of a kid that has drive, that had goals and set them, and is probably the kind of kid that has had to work hard to get as far as he has.

Bench pressing double your body weight is hard. No, make that really freakin' hard. I have known maybe 3 guys in my whole life who could make that claim. And 35 pull-ups? Good luck passing ten. So maybe I am overvaluing the level of effort, sacrifice, and commitment it takes to make those claims, but to me, they show some character. And that I think would make me want to meet the kid.

On a broader level, I sort of get really angry and frustrated when I read these kinds of pieces, and read the smug know-it-all comments and insults lobbed towards job seekers who in an attempt to make their credentials stand out from the pack, fail to execute in just exactly the way we 'professionals' want them to. I am not defending spelling errors, shaky grammar, and sloppiness, but I am standing up for making a claim as to why you're awesome and why you deserve consideration.

So yes, if it were me, I'd bring the kid in to interview. And I'd probably ask for some workout tips. 

Job Poaching and Designing Engaging Systems

You've probably heard or read about the class-action civil case to be held in San Jose meant to determine if Google, Apple, Pixar, Lucasfilm, Adobe, Intel, and Intuit in various combinations conspired to eliminate or at least reduce competition for skilled labor by entering into illegal 'anti-poaching' or 'Gentlemen's agreements' where these firms would cease recruiting from each others employee bases.

While the tech focused sites like TechCrunch have been following the story for quite some time, as far as I can tell, the only HR/Recruiting writer to have a take on the issue was Kris Dunn at the HR Capitalist, with a piece called 'Hey CEO: Your High Level Agreements Not to Poach Employees are Anti-Trust Violations...', where KD quite succinctly and correctly warns HR and Recruitng pros against entering into such agreements, even when the CEO wants to help a 'friend' at a competing firm, or when two firm's leaders kind of give a wink and a nod to each other, both knowing back and forth poaching (usually) ends up in increasing costs, delaying progress, and even (horrors!), having to keep and extra HR or Recruiting pro on staff to deal with all the churn.

It's an interesting story and I recommend the TechCrunch coverage as well as KD's take on it, but one other aspect of the story, slightly linked, and also covered on TechCrunch, is related to a new 'recruiting' site called Job Poacher. Job Poacher seems to have been at least partially inspired by the high-tech poaching case, and part of that response was to create an anonymous, simple, and direct platform for employees that, well, want to be 'poached' without their current company knowing.

Job Poacher 'registration'

Job Poacher is a site that "lets you make yourself available to recruiters, without exposing your identity or giving up your email address. We set you up with an anonymous email address that you control — just like on "Craigslist". 

After a potential candidate provides the basic information in the 'poachee' profile, their listing appears on the 'Poachees' tab on the site, and interested recruiters can message them via a simple 'Reply' button.

From then on the prospect and recruiter can connect and figure out if there is any interest, suitability, and so on. 

There are two things I really like about Job Poacher and I think are worth noting. One, sometimes, maybe almost all the time, looking for a new gig when you are currently employed can be really tough to keep under wraps. Buffing up your LinkedIn profile, dusting off the old personal blog that had been dormant, trading the T-shirt and cargo pants look for some sharper duds are all tell-tale signs that something might be up, and that something often needs to be kept quiet.

And two, I really like the incredibly simplicity of the registration process. Seven simple bits of information are asked for, presented in a way that makes it seem like less, and in a manner that makes the user feel more like they are telling a little bit of a story about themselves rather than mindlessly filling in another web form that they've done probably hundreds of times. When you look at the form, it makes you want to tell that little story. Even the header, 'I'm brilliant, and I want something better', is miles more engaging than most job sites pitch to 'Fill in the 17 fields below and we will (if we remember) to email you of suitable matching jobs in the future.'

I know there are a million holes that can be poked in what Job Poacher is doing here, and I am not trying to argue it can or will be an effective site for job seekers or recruiters, but I do think there are some lessons to learn about simple design, responding to a need with that design, and not over-complicating it all.

What do you think? Would you use a site like Job Poacher?

Picture Yourself Here

Have you seen any of these kinds of targeted job ads on LinkedIn recently?

I am not sure exactly when these kinds of personalized ads started popping up on the professional networking site, but over the weekend while I was scoping out who had viewed my profile, connecting with like minded HR and Technology professionals and contributing to industry discussion and dialogue, I noticed the ad to the right. Like a moth to a flame, or a bargain-hunting performance car shopper to Ashley Schaeffer Imports, I couldn't help but notice my own mug staring back out at me from LinkedIn's right margin.

Picture Yourself with this New Job, the tag line reads, (interesting use of BOLD and capitalization), and with the addition of my profile picture to the company name, logo and position title, the ad attempts to make me feel somehow connected or even invested in not just the job, but of me having the job.

Which are entirely two different things. 

And since LinkedIn is a modern, social, Web 2.0 deal, Apply Now and Share Job buttons come along for the ride. Confession - I did not think to click either one when I first encountered the ad, and now I can't seem to convince LinkedIn to show it to me again. But let's assume, for now, both buttons work as expected, for the purposes of this post, it doesn't really matter. 

What does matter, at least what I find interesting about this kind of targeted and personalized job ad, is the way it attempts to use information about me, (in this case the information is primarily where I live, as M&T Bank is a Northeast regional bank, with lots of presence in Western New York), my actual image from the site, and some suggestive copy to make me think more about inhabiting this role, rather than just simply clicking a link to a sterile, impersonal ad (that I was not searching for in the first place).

What the ad immediately made me think of are the recruiting tactics that are often employed by major college athletic programs and coaches in their pursuit of targeted top High School athletes. Often these athletes have lots of options in their choice of college and team/coach to play for, and to help make their case the competing colleges frequently employ custom videos of imagined highlight packages or simulated stadium scoreboard displays or PA announcements that include the recruit's likeness or name. These videos, announcement, and other strategies are designed to make the high schooler think not about being a star Quarterback generally, but being a star Quarterback at that school specifically.  

Trish McFarlane had an excellent post earlier in the week about recruiting needing to be an individual process, and I think these kinds of personalized, targeted ads, (while admittedly still kind of crude), will eventually serve as an important first step in what becomes the custom, individual process that Trish describes.  It is not hard to imagine the LinkedIn ad getting way more intelligent about what roles you could realistically picture yourself in. Using insight from career paths from similar profiles, career history of members you are connected with, and macro analysis of jobs, industries, or locations that are 'hot', pretty soon I'll bet LinkedIn can map out a realistic and reachable career path for anyone.

Interesting times for sure. Meanwhile, have a look at a bit of a takeoff on the college recruiting tactics, courtesy of ESPN, (email and RSS subscribers will need to click through).

The Other One Percenters

The entire '99% vs. the 1%' is now a well established concept (thanks to the 'Occupy' movement), or method of describing in very broad terms the income, (and some might say opportunity), disparity that exists in the US economy. When you hear these terms, you immediately understand the concepts, take your own position on the merits of each point of view, and sometimes self-identify with one group or the other.Let's hug it out

But recently I read an interesting piece on the AdAge Digital site about a different kind of 1%, (that was an awkward transition, admittedly), specifically the 1% of a company or a brand's social media fans that seem to actively engage with said company or brand. The article, titled 'Study: Only 1% of Facebook 'Fans' Engage With Brands', recounts a recent piece of research conducted by the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute that claims to show that only about 1% of the self-identified 'fans' of a brand on Facebook, (certainly not the only social platform, but indeed the largest), actually 'engage' with the brand by commenting, tagging, sharing, etc. actively with the brand and the content.  The vast, vast majority, the other 99%, simply identify as fans, get exposed to some of the brands' content, and continue on with whatever else they were doing.

While seemingly offering a really low return on investment to marketers, at least according to the study's authors it doesn't paint a totally bleak picture. From the AdAge piece:

"I don't think it's a bad thing," said Karen Nelson-Field, senior research associate for Ehrenberg-Bass Institute who describes herself as a "Facebook advocate." "People need to understand what it can do for a brand and what it can't do. Facebook doesn't really differ from mass media. It's great to get decent reach, but to change the way people interact with a brand overnight is just unrealistic." 

In this understanding of the marketing and media worlds, social is just another media channel useful for its reach rather than any notion of engagement.

While this article and the study it refers to are in a strict sense focusing on consumer brand engagement, I think they offer some food for thought for the Human Resources and Recruiting professionals who are increasingly looking to social platforms like Facebook and Twitter to create interest, conversation, and dare I use the word again, engagement for their own purposes. The main point, that an engagement level of 1% might be the baseline is instructive as HR pros create their forecasts and plans. 

But the second point the AdAge piece brings up is even more thought provoking -  namely whether or not social platforms like Facebook are truly brand engagement platforms, or just another marketing and messaging channel like newspaper ads, company web sites, or large job boards.  I know we like to think that with social all or at least many of the traditional rules no longer apply, but this study (and others), suggest that maybe the change is not happening so fast.

What do you think? Does the 1% number hold up in your experience? And does it even matter?

The Best Worst Recruiting Video (so far)

This funny recruiting video from Twitter was posted on YouTube on Friday, and made the rounds pretty quickly across the web over the weekend, so chances are you may have seen it already. The embed is below in case you missed it, or wanted to have a second look, (email and RSS subscribers will need to click through).

The YouTube post on Twitter's official channel was accompanied by this tweet-like update:

#hackweek project: make the best/worst recruiting video of all time. Done.
To find out more about jobs at Twitter visit: http://www.twitter.com/jobs or @jointheflock

So while the video itself looks to have been made in response to a hack week challenge to intentionally create the worst recruiting video possible, it is so bad, cheesy, and done with such low production values that I think it ends up actually being a pretty effective effort nonetheless. 

A couple of things stand out in the video, chief among them the fact that just by devoting one of their hackweek challenges to making a recruiting video, Twitter is sending a subtle message that is actually taking recruiting seriously and its talent needs are top of mind. Typically these kinds of challenges focus on products, features, or other kinds of explorations that possibly could become products or features one day. So focusing on boring old recruiting is to me, kind of telling. Additionally, unlike more technical challenges, really anyone in the company can make a recruiting video, expanding the potential participant pool outside of just the product people and engineers.

And then there is the content of the video itself, in its attempt (mostly successful), to be 'bad', it reveals that Twitter and its employees are open to poke a little fun at themselves - even the CEO gets in on the game with a solid, deadpan performance in the piece. It clearly is real Twitter employees in the piece, not corporate talking heads, they are in their natural working environments, and while going over the top to be cheesy, if you listen to the copy you actually get a pretty simple, straightforward employer branding kind of message. Small teams, important projects, great work environment and so on. And a CEO not above helping send that message. A call to action with the web address of the career page and the recruiting Twitter account, (natch), also make the cut.

Sure, the purpose of the video was to make it bad, but in a way it kind of shows anyone interested in creating these kinds of messages that it can be really easy to overthink them, to wordsmith every line of copy, and to obsess over getting the sets, lighting, pace etc. all 'just right'. If the folks at Twitter can make a bad video still seem pretty good, then I think that suggests any of us could do the same.

What do you think? Is it really just a bad and a spoof and I am reading too much into it?