Please submit your resume, three references, and a facial scan

For recruiters and Human Resources professionals sorting through mountains of applicant resumes, conducting and reviewing scores of interviews, checking references, and doing the requisite online social media stalking research, of candidates; hiring is a lengthy, challenging, and certainly inexact science.Source - PLoS One

Sure, over time and with experience professional recruiters and HR gurus can and do certainly get better at managing these processes (and the right technologies implemented in a smart manner definitely can help), but even with years of practice and refinement, the hiring process itself can still resemble a long, slow, dreary march, filled with mostly sequential and incremental steps meant to answer a fairly basic question - 'Is this the kind of person we want to work with?'.

What if there was a way not necessarily to usurp these processes to drive to the answer to that question, but to supplement or attempt to confirm the conclusions drawn from the interview processes with a little bit of technology and science that claims to offer an accurate assessment of a person's basic character elements, without being beguiled or influenced by factors that can possibly be more easily manipulated by the candidate?

Take a look at this piece from the CNET - 'Software can tell if you're mean and ugly', a piece that describes a new kind of facial recognition software that claims that 'using machine-learning techniques, it also examines images of faces for other social traits, such as competence, trustworthiness, meanness, dominance, and extroversion.'

Competence? Trustworthiness? Meanness? 

Those sound like the kinds of traits that might have plenty to do with success on the job and the assessment of these traits is in large part what the recruiting and hiring processes are designed to determine. Could a simple facial scan when processed by this new software actually drive a better, more accurate, and quicker understanding of these critical personality factors?

According to the CNET piece the software claims to have achieved between 91 and 96 percent accuracy for at least three traits - dominance, threat, and meanness. 

Now before you go crazy in the comments about all the legal and ethical problems with incorporating a crazy technology like facial recognition scanning in the hiring process, I will be clear in stating that I don't think this kind of technology has a place (at least right now), in any candidate assessment process.  But the technology is kind of interesting, and it might just have other applications we have not thought of as yet.

And it also helps to point out that despite all the time, effort, and application of years of experience that we bring to bear on the hiring process, sometimes the best way to get a bead on someone is to just look them straight in the eye, (and also assess their shape, alignment, and equidistance).

What do you think - will this kind of technology ever have a place in the recruiting process?

Revealing organizational strategy via job ads

I caught this piece on Gamespot.com about Google's recent job listing for a position called 'Product Manager - Games', located at Google's Mountain View, CA headquarters. Here's the information about the role straight from the job listing on the Google careers page:

Rare opportunity to grow a brand-new business - Games at Google! We are looking for a strategic, technical and game-loving Product Manager to drive Google's gaming strategy. You will design strategies for game distribution and discovery, player identity, game mechanics, and more. In addition to designing a great user experience and building out key partnerships, you will be significantly influencing Google's social platform as you work directly with a critical set of early adopters, game developers. Interesting and impactful decisions involving social gaming, privacy, virality, business, and technical APIs await you and the strong, passionate team of gamers you will work with.

Sounds like a pretty interesting and challenging job, right? A chance to really shape and drive what one day might end up being an important line of business for one of the biggest tech companies in the world in a space that is super-hot right now - think Farmville, CityVille, et. al.

So Google is getting more serious about social games as evidenced by this job listing.  Before the news of this listing broke, perhaps that was not so obvious. According to the Gamespot piece 'indicates that Google is definitely planning to get into the games business.' The strong implication is that the posting for the Games Manager job was the validation of some ongoing rumors about Google's potential involvement in the space. 

But I am not highlighting the post just because it seems like a cool gig, but to wonder a bit about how often organizations reveal their business strategies via public job ads. Let's play devil's advocate for a second and pretend that Google had some kind of skunk works project underway meant to try and make a splash in the social gaming space. It would make sense to keep that information on the DL, grab some engineers from other internal groups, have your execs and recruiters work their networks on the phone or online to seek out the talent they need, and really do what they could to keep the word that they were looking for a rockstar Games Manager off the radar of the rest of the Silicon Valley talent sharks.

Again for the purposes of this piece we are assuming Google would benefit from keeping these aspirations for Social Gaming under wraps for a while, so posting an ad like this sends a red flag up to all the other competitors in the space, and gives them public affirmation and impetus to take action, either offensive or defensive. Does the job ad serve as a signal of strategy that a smart recruiter would have never posted publicly, preferring to work this under the radar so as not to broadcast the company intentions in the space?

Is lazy or ineffective recruiting giving away too much?

Or is Google pulling a classic sleight of hand maneuver, posting a job it really will never fill, fr a business it may or may not be interested in, just to throw the pack off of the scent?

How much do you monitor the job ads of your competitors?

Can I Work There if I Live Here?

There are really only a few, perhaps ten or so, major decisions that people take in their lives that have such significant and long-lasting impact on the quality of their lives, their happiness, their financial and physical health, and even their legacies, that they usually require long and careful consideration before they are taken. 

Where to go to college, what career path to pursue, what kind of job to take, where to live, whether or not to continue to date that slacker in hopes you can change him, (cut him loose, you know he will never change), and so on.

But for job and career related decisions, at least for now when the majority of jobs still require reporting most days to a central work location, be it an office, store, factory, etc. - geography and it's associated impact on the decision process is an ever-present but at times under appreciated part of the complex dynamic. Sure, companies and candidates both spend lots of time evaluating skills match, career objectives, company culture, salary and benefits, and the like, but often questions like 'How long will it take me to commute each day?' or 'Can I afford to live anywhere near where the facility is?' or 'Are there any childcare options on the way to the office?', are not typically emphasized in interview and assessment process. Sure the candidate thinks about these issues some, but often only as a secondary set of considerations to the actual job itself, and usually the candidate is left to sort out the answers to these questions on their own.

And these are critically important questions, ones that will effect the potential employee's likelihood for success, and certainly their quality of life outside of work. So how can organizations try to better help candidates address these concerns, as well as provide some insight to the challenges that the candidate (or even the existing employee base), might be facing in terms of geography, commuting time, and other real-world considerations?

How about with an interactive map that shows office locations, median real estate costs, average commute times, and other practical, real, and really important data points to help candidates and employers make more informed decisions? Take a look at an example of what such a map would look like, this one for the San Francisco area: (click here, or on the image to try the map out yourself).

This map was created by Stamen, a Design and Technology studio from San Francisco.

To work with the tool, simply plot your starting point or destination point on the map, then on the left side, select from different modes of transit, ranging from car sharing to biking to walking. After that, you can indicate the desired length of commute, and the housing price range you can work with. After your selections are made, the map then shades in all the neighborhoods that lie within your parameters. It tries to help answer the basic question - 'If I live here, can I afford to work there?'

For people and potential employees not familiar with the area, this kind of a tool is a fantastic resource, and one that I could see a large employer in any given market or geography using to both inform, educate, and even attract candidates.

If you are say recruiting hard to convince a candidate to leave an area like San Francisco to come to perhaps, Birmingham, (cultural capital of the South), you could clearly and in an interactive manner demonstrate some of those 'quality of life/cost of living' angles that you play up on the phone. And additionally, having access to this kind of interactive data would better inform company leaders planning the next office location, or possible re-organization. You could easily develop this tool a bit further to plot the addresses of employees and build some intelligence to calculate changes in average commute time, energy use, and even impact on company happiness (a stretch, but just go with it), that would accompany a physical office move.

What do you think - would like to have a tool that allowed you and your candidates to better assess more of the real-life variables in the recruiting process?

Have a great weekend!

Webcast - Thursday June 9th - The Social Referral

Tomorrow at 1:00PM EDT I will be presenting a webcast for the Human Capital Institute and made possible by support from the recruiting technology solutions provider SelectMinds titled - 'Referrals Powered by Social Media'. The basic premise of the presentation is that while source and quality of hire studies consistently demonstrate that referrals, (employee, alumni, even customer), are a high quality and important component of an integrated sourcing and recruiting strategy, than many organizations fail to adequately capitalize on their stakeholders' existing networks to further and enhance their referral programs.

Advances in technology, coupled with the rise of the extended networks of staff and other interested parties as a valuable and highly leverageable asset for recruiting, have given rise to a new set of tools, processes, and approaches to referral programs, and the most forward thinking organizations will sense these trends, and take steps to capitalize on them to enhance their sourcing efforts, power and challenge their employees to participate in critical recruiting activities, and augment and develop the unique employer brand and value proposition in the market.

I plan on talking about the importance of a healthy referral program as a key component of a robust recruiting strategy, some of the barriers to implementation and performance, (and ways to address them), and the increasingly important role new technology solutions play to help make these so-called social referral programs scale, perform, and impact the organization.

One of the points I will try to make is that technology-enabled social referral programs really share most of the same challenges as old-fashioned, paper or email-based, programs of the past. Communication, motivation, ease of use, responsiveness, and connection to the organizaton's important objectives are just as important today as they always have been. The new technology certainly makes the processes and the mechanics easier to administer, and the best new technology can even lead to better referrals, but if the fundamentals are not in place, then the program will prove ultimately disappointing.

You can register for the free HCI webcast here, and again the presentation is scheduled for Thursday June 9, 2011 at 1:00PM ET. 

I hope you will join me tomorrow!

The Big Picture Thinker, or Making Candidates Tap Dance

When trying to find the best candidate for the job, how many interviews are too much?

When do your standard questions become a little insulting or the screening surveys you have carefully crafted go too far, and in the process turn away candidates with the background and qualifications you are seeking, but feel taken aback by having to prove themselves during your application process?

I started to think about this while reading a recent post on The Daily WTF blog, a site normally centered around tales of dodgy computer programming, clueless end users, and mostly amusing but not really cruel hijinks and frivolity for the geeky set. Every so often The Daily WTF shares a job interview story, and while normally kind of fun, the 'Big Picture Thinker' yarn is one of the best I have seen.

So the story goes something like this:

After an in-person technical interview for an unnamed development, (or possibly managerial position), the company sends a standard, (but simple), technical aptitude test to the candidate. The test is meant to help gauge written communication skills. But in this case, not only did the hiring manager forget to attach the test to his email, he surprisingly found himself dealing with a candidate that clearly did not feel it necessary to 'prove' himself by taking the test. Take a look at the candidate's response:

----------------------------------------------------------

From: Thomas B-------
Sent: Friday, April 08, 2011 10:37 AM
To: James S------
Subject: RE: Written Test


When a big picture thinker with nearly 20 years of experience in 
IT sends you a resume and cover letter like mine and says that he 
can help you win a client that is pulling in 1.3 Billion per year, 
here's what you don't do:  

  1. Set up an interview with a couple of in-the-box thinking 
     Microsoft drones with questions on minutia.  

  2. Hand him a test to see what his "style", attention to 
     detail, and problem solving approach is.  
     
Here's my style: I am certain that I can run circles around your 
best developers with my own, original, incredibly efficient model; 
but more importantly, I am a director that can help them run 
circles around their own current misguided misconceptions.  But I 
am thankful for this lesson, as I have learned that I need to add 
a cover to my cover letter that reads:  If you are an in-the-box 
thinking Microsoft house, and you find yourself regurgitating 
terms like OOP, MVC, TDD, BDD, Cucumber, etc..., without really 
understanding what it all means and how much it is actually 
costing your company to have bought into that industry pushed 
bullshit, then DO NOT contact me.  I'd save you too much money, 
and you obviously do not want that.

So the question now is:  Did I pass the test?

The answer is: Fuck yes I did.

Thomas B-------

PS. You forgot to attach the quiz.  

Do this: Print out a copy of it, ball it up, and throw it at 
your own forehead, because that's what I would do if I were 
there.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Classic, and kind of instructive. Sure, Thomas B. the candidate in question is quite likely a pompous jerk, and doesn't seem like the type of employee that would be a great addition to the team. But it is also likely that he probably did possess the basic technical qualifications for the job, and that his experience and resume details would have borne that out. 

I get the need for organizations to be careful, thorough, and sure, (or as sure as you can be), before pulling the trigger on a new hire. The stakes are high, the pressure to find top talent is palpable, and the costs of making a bad hire are high. But at the same time making candidates unnecessarily jump through hoops, answer incredibly basic questions, and otherwise put them into a kind of disrespected and subservient position is not really warranted either.

So the next time you are about to administer that 'test', think about whether or not you too should 'print out a copy, ball it up, and throw it at your own forehead.'