'Like' this job on Facebook

At the recent ERE Expo in San Diego, I had a chance to interview Stephane Le Viet, CEO and Founder; and Matt Brown, Director of Business Development of Work4Labs, the company responsible for the popular Facebook recruiting application known as 'Work 4 Us'.

Work 4 Us is a Facebook application that allows organizations to quickly and easily add job listings to their company Facebook page, whether by automated import from the company ATS or career site, or via manual entry. Once imported or entered, the company can then leverage the social sharing capabilities inherent inside Facebook (individual jobs can be shared and 'liked'); and the supported integration with the Facebook advertising platform allows the creation of more precise ad campaigns designed to get the company job listings noticed by the target candidate audience on Facebook. Tracking and analytical tools allow the organization to assess and evaluate the reach and success of their job posting campaigns.

That's assuming the desired candidate pool is on Facebook. And considering that pretty much everyone these days from your 12-year old nephew to your 83-year old Grandma seems to be on Facebook it is a pretty good bet that at least some of your desired candidates are out there.

Work4Labs claims over 6,000 organizations have installed the Work For Us application to date, with large, multi-nationals like L'Oreal and Citi among the applications' most notable adopters.

Yesterday the team at Work4Labs announced a new enhancement to the Work For Us application, namely the ability to present the Facebook user that views a job description in the application with a suggested list of Facebook friends, and optionally LinkedIn contacts that might be a suitable match for the job, and perhaps would be interested in the job details. Once authorized, the app processes Facebook and LinkedIn profile data – education, work history, interests, location, and so on – to suggest the most relevant friends for the job.

Sample job listing posted using Work For Us with suggested friends:

This is the kind of functionality, a matching algorithm based suggestion engine, that social recruiting technology solutions are increasingly adopting in recognition that simply broadcasting links of available jobs to all of one's social connections is not only inefficient but can also be seen as highly annoying. By making the social sharing and referral process simple, easy to use, and more relevant by narrowing and suggesting social contacts to share the job information with, the hope is that the organization will not only just see it's job posting shared widely, but that the likelihood of social discovery of candidates that are good fits for the positions will increase.

More and more organizations are actively pursuing so-called 'social recruiting' strategies, whether it is using blogs, LinkedIn groups, Twitter accounts, and even Facebook to advertise positions, communicate and articulate the company employer brand, and more effectively engage with candidates and prospects. If your organization is starting down this path, or is considering adding a more active Facebook component to the mix, then you should give Work4Labs a look.

The Work For Us application installs to a Facebook page in literally minutes and has a number of pricing plans, ranging from Free (allows posting of one open position at a time), to $799/month that offers unlimited job postings, automatic import from an ATS, and other customization capabilities. All paid plans offer a 30-day free trial period.

So are you actively recruiting on Facebook? Thinking about starting?  Would the Work For Us application work for you?

The Right Person for the Job

...might actually be the exact opposite of what your job requirements say.

Now hear me out for a second. I know if you are the recruiter responsible for hiring, say, the next anesthesiologist for the operating room, that you had better be darn sure that to folks you present know how to safely administer sedation, monitor their patient's condition, and respond quickly and effectively if something goes awry.  These critical skills and experiences for that kind of role are obvious and non-negotiable. I get it. Similarly, if you were hiring the next pilot for your company's charter airline service, things like 10,000 hours flying comparable aircraft, and a history of 'not showing up drunk for work' are pre-requisites for anyone aspiring to the gig.

But most of the jobs in the American economy are not life or death propositions, and the relative importance of published job requirements are certainly up for debate.  Sure, if you are looking to hire a Sr. Developer in 'XYZ' programming language, then at least some demonstrable knowledge and experience in XYZ are a real and defensible requirement, but again, most companies slap an artificial 'years of experience' qualifier to whatever particular technical skill they require. 

The thinking makes sense, you need a really proficient XYZ Developer, one that you don't have time to train, and that you are willing to pay the going market rate that kind of skill commands.  So you draw on your personal or organizational insight and determine for someone to actually have developed the level of XYZ expertise you are after, that the person must have been messing about with XYZ in a professional capacity for 2 or 5 or 10 years. It doesn't really matter what 'number' you land on, but rather that you have set the 'floor' of experience that you say you need. 

But by setting that more or less artificial and experiential floor, you have determined that you really don't care so much about actual and potentially demonstrable technical ability as you do about a candidate's ability to had you a resume that 'proves' the 5 years of experience is all in order. We don't really care what the candidates can do, we just care that they have done something related to the job description for the proscribed amount of time.

But what actually made me think about this topic, one I have written about before, was a recent piece in the Harvard Business Review's 'The Conversation' blog called 'Want Innovative Thinking? Hire from the Humanities. In the piece, author Tony Golsby-Smith articulates a case for organizations that are increasingly challenged to innovate faster, to surface more creative ideas, and to simply 'out-think' their competition, that a more expansive and inclusive set of hiring practices should be leveraged. Instead or bringing in yet another class of Top 20 Business School educated MBA's, firms should consider recruiting more students from humanities programs, as in the author's contention, humanities training can produce more innovative thinking, enhanced capability to embrace ambiguity, and perhaps most critically, more effective communication skills, both written and verbal.

We can debate the 'required skills' versus 'find the smartest people' issues forever. But for me, one thing is certain, each additional 'position requirement' you list on the job requisition makes your potential pool smaller, and of course that is what we want. 

But at some point, the combination of these (possibly arbitrary) requirements, and the other non job skills specific factors (salary, location, company reputation, prospects, etc.), narrow the pool so much, that millions of jobs sit unfilled at the same time more millions of people are out of work.

In NFL football, when the teams hold the annual player draft, each team determines a position or two of dire need, that they really want to try to fill with a new college draftee.  But when their turn comes to select a player, and the most talented options for their position of most need are all gone, they don't pass on their turn. Instead they select the 'best player available' regardless of whether or not they really need another player at that position. 

They know, as most high performing organizations do, that assembling the most talent, even if they don't exactly fit into a pre-determined set of boxes is, in the long run, a winning strategy.

This Job is Not For You

Came across yet another one of those 'offbeat and quirky job adverts/application processes' yesterday, this one from the folks at UK Ad Agency SELL!SELL!

Titled  'This Job is Not For You', the application form for the position, a junior level role in account/project management, asks candidates to answer questions like, 'Who's the best, Batman or Colonel Oliver North? Why?', and asks them to 'Post a video of yourself telling a joke on YouTube and share the link (can be private) here'.

The application form is below, and is also posted here.

These kinds of unusual application processes and job descriptions are starting to get more common, especially in creative fields like advertising, design, or even marketing; and I suppose really are not all that newsworthy anymore. But what I liked about this advertisement and application process is its explicit focus on why candidates would not be right for the job and how it focuses prospective applicants that were not going to be a good fit for the position to really challenge themselves to consider self-screening out.

Most typical and boring job advertisements for similar roles across organizations read kind of the same; an Administrative Assistant position at Company 'A' reads exactly the same as a similar role at Company 'B'.  But the myriad of other factors that would make a qualified candidate a better 'fit' at one firm versus the other are normally not even hinted at, much less explicitly communicated.

Sure, a phone screen or in-person interview might shed light on these culture and style issues, and be reasonably effective at weeding out candidates that are not a good match culturally for the organization, but the unusual method of communication and atypical format of the job application like the one above from Sell!Sell! would provide an efficient pre-screening filter for applicants.  

I know what you are thinking, these kinds of crazy application processes and offbeat blog postings that encourage candidates not to apply might work for a boutique, creative ad agency, but for my staid and traditional firm they would never fly. I need to roll out the fully approved and vetted (and incredibly boring) job description to my online ad, and make sure I require the same resume, cover letter, and list of references from every applicant, (who all have been well-coached to not submit anything at all 'unsafe' or potentially interesting, lest they stand out from the pack too much).

The end result, often, is a stack of barely distinguishable candidate packages that don't do all that much to offer any insight to the candidate's likelihood to be a good match to your organizational culture.

Unless of course your 'culture' is centered on plainness and looking like every other competitor, then almost all in your pack of candidates will seem like a fit.

Happy Weekend!

Note - I know the application form above asks for videos, pictures, etc.; the kind of things that at least in the US can get you into trouble, I am not advocating that companies do anything that runs afoul of laws and regulations around EEO. So there.

You're asking me? Did you check LinkedIn?

Maybe the job market is heating up.

In the last three days I’ve been contacted by three separate recruiters; two agency, and one corporate, inquiring about my interest and availability for opportunities they wanted to present. That’s pretty cool - and probably equals the number of cold calls I have received in the last several months combined.

Each call went more of less exactly the same - (Aside: I shockingly answered my phone for all three calls, which for me is some kind of record):

Recruiter : Hi Steve - this is Joe/Mary/Sue from XYZ Company - how are you today?

Steve - I am fantastic, how are you?

Recruiter - Very well.  Steve, I came across your resume on (choose from the following: Monster/Careerbuilder/Dice/ ‘my files’) and I wanted to talk to you about an opportunity I am working on.

Steve - Sure.

Note - I don’t bother with the silly ‘How did you find me/get my phone number?’ questions. It is their job to find people.  I am pretty easy to find. And I am sure there is a ‘Steve’ resume out there on all those sites, I bet some of them have been floating around for years.

Recruiter - So tell me, what are you doing these days? Are you working full-time? Are you contracting or consulting?

Steve - Well, I sort of do a number of things, I'm keeping very busy.

At this point I am basically stalling, because I genuinely want to know if the Recruiter really doesn’t know what I am doing, or they are using Recruiter jedi mind-trick #7 and attempting to see if what I say matches what they ought to know about me, (that's assuming that since they are calling me about an opportunity, they should know something about me).

Recruiter - Aren’t we all?  Ha-Ha-Ha.  So let me tell you about what I am working on, it is a contract/position/engagement at …..... Is this something you may be interested in?  Can I send some more information to you about the position?

Steve - Sure, send me the information, you have my email don’t you? No? It is steveboese@gmail.com. If it is something I am interested in, I will get back to you.

Recruiter - Great, I will and thanks.  Have a nice day.

Steve - You as well.

And Scene.

Three recruiting cold calls, each essentially following the same script. Sort of indistinguishable from each other, with all three marked by (at least the expressed) lack of awareness by the recruiter of anything about me other than what they have learned from whatever source information or document, some certainly several years old, that they were working from.  Did you take a minute to ‘Google’ me? Scope my profile on LinkedIn?

Again, I have never been a recruiter, so maybe that feigned ignorance is a standard trick to feel out a prospect, and to get them talking about themselves in hopes they will reveal some insights that will help the recruiter make a quick decision whether to engage or to cut and run and move on to the next call.

But to me, the ‘prospect’, it just seemed lazy.  In a world where information - updated, real-time information at that, is everywhere; the notion that a prospect should have to update a cold-calling recruiter as to ‘What they’ve been up to’ seems almost archaic.

These days, and certainly for professionals that are candidates for the kinds of jobs I was called about, shouldn’t the recruiter have told me all about me? Are my eyes really blue?

Heck, I am the last person you should ask if you want to know what I am up to.

1/2 Man, 1/2 Amazing

This may be a surprise to some, but I do appreciate (sort of) that not everyone that reads this blog is as fully invested and familiar with the nuances of sports, and in particular professional basketball.  1/2 Man

So you may not have realized that the title of this post, 1/2 Man, 1/2 Amazing was not just meant as a general descriptive phrase, but rather was/is the nickname of an actual person, legendary street and playground legend Anthony Heyward.  The nickname stems from a famous Heyward slam dunk over a much taller player. The full details of Heyward's nickname from Hoopedia:

An original member of the AND 1 team he earned Street Name, 1/2 Man balling at Rucker Park. After driving the lane and dunking on a dude that was much bigger then him, Rucker MC Duke Tango called him 1/2 Man 1/2 Amazing. The name has stuck ever since and we all know who was the first player to have it was (sorry Vince Carter). 

Like many of the other streetball legends that have come before and since, 1/2 Man never has 'made it', that is, obtained the highest level of accomplishment in professional basketball, a contract with an NBA team.  There are various theories why fantastic street ball talents like 1/2 Man have largely failed to make an impact in the Association, from lack of experience in structured offensive and defensive systems, to games that are kind of one-dimensional and thus easily defensed at the NBA level, or to a perception that the street or playground game is simply inferior to the NBA game, and consequently its stars, while talented, are by and large a level (or two) below top professional caliber.

I suppose it is debatable whether or not any individual playground star like 1/2 Man was or is talented enough to make it in the NBA, logically you would have to assume that if indeed an NBA contract were offered guys like 1/2 Man would jump at the chance, since even the minimum NBA salary (between about $500K and $1.4M based on experience) is bound to be far greater than what can be earned in the playgrounds and on barnstorming tours playing in local gyms.

But more interesting to me in the case of the NBA largely ignoring the playground legends, is considering how much of the snub is due to pure basketball ability and potential, and how much is based on these players not having the 'correct' background and more typical developmental experiences of NBA players. Even today, most new NBA players compete in American colleges, even if for only a year or two.  Non North American players usually have experience in high-level professional leagues in Europe. With only the occasional exception (e.g. Rafer Alston, AKA 'Skip to my Lou' ), no one steps from the playground to the NBA.

Ok, so you are not in the business of stocking and NBA team. Sadly, neither am I. But chances are you and your organization is looking for help right now.  Chances are even in a recession, your company has to fill and back fill jobs. 

Chances you are looking to the same sources (Top 20 colleges, LinkedIn, or employee referrals) that have always worked for you in the past.

Chances are you don't have a scout watching the talent on the playground.  And that is too bad.

Because that is where 1/2 Man 1/2 Amazing plays. 

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