HR Southwest - Do I have to talk about my feelings?

The afternoon of the first day of HR Southwest was fun - good sessions, a lively (and complete with the expected technical issues), live broadcast of the HR Happy Hour show, and capped off by an enjoyable tweet-up sponsored by Aquire Software.

The most interesting session I attended was presented by Adele Lynn, and centered on Emotional Intelligence, and how in the interview process the recruiter/hiring manager/HR Professional can learn how to look for and assess the 'Emotional Intelligence' of a given candidate.  

Ms. Lynn defines 'Emotional Intelligence' as the 'ability to manage your relationships with others so that you can live your intentions and values'.

In the application of the Emotional Intelligence model to recruiting and interviewing, the interviewer attempts to take the widely practiced 'Behavioral Interviewing' method ' 'Tell me about a time when...' and extend it with questions that gauge the emotional intelligence of the candidate - 'How did it feel when...' and 'What did you learn about the experience?' and 'How were you changed by the experience?'

The theory being by supplementing behavioral based questions with emotional based questions, the interviewer can get a fuller, truer picture of the candidate, how the candidate will respond in challenging situations, and even the ability and potential of the candidate to grow and develop with experience.

Ms. Lynn was an engaging speaker, and throughout the presentation gave practical examples (many using recorded interviews) to illustrate the key points, and challenge the audience to think more deeply about the EI approach.  You can learn more about EI from her many books on the subject.

I like the idea of the EI approach, at least from the organizational side.  Any technique that leads to better, more aligned hires is valuable. If I were a candidate, I would not be so sure. 

It's hard enough to craft a solid resume, negotiate an ATS and labyrinth application process to get in the door.

Now I have to talk about my feelings too? Crap.

The Screening Machine

College and University admissions departments are faced annually with the challenge of sorting though what are often many thousands of applications for what are significantly less available positions in the incoming freshman class.   

In fact, establishing and maintaining a low percentage of 'accepted' applicants, or conversely a high percentage of rejected applicants, is perceived as a sign of an institution's selectivity, quality, and impacts positively on those 'Best Colleges' lists that are extremely important to college administrators, current and prospective students, parents,  and alumni.

It's kind of a virtuous cycle - improved institutional reputation --> more applications --> greater selectivity --> higher ranking on the lists --> improved reputation.  And so on.  Mix in a successful sports team once in a while, and the school is on its way to more donations, more research grants, and a spot on the Presidential debate hosting roster.

It's all good except for the folks in the admissions departments that are tasked with most of the work in awarding these highly sought after slots in the incoming class to the select 10% or even less of the applicants that will make the cut. And as most of us who remember the college application process and experience, either our own or our kids, the applications are complex, long, and contain a complicated mix of standard measures (SAT tests), sort of standard measures (comparative GPA's), and completely non-standard and subjective measures (essays, recommendations, after-school activities). The Admitulator

All in all, a difficult recruiting and 'hiring'process, not that unlike what happens in corporate recruiting every day.  Companies often have hundreds of applications for a position, the evaluation criteria is a mixture of standard (advanced degrees), and non-standard (impressions left after an interview), and making the right selection has important and long-term impacts on the organization.  In both college admissions and corporate recruiting, making the 'right' choice isn't easy.

That is why I thought a new, experimental program called the 'Admitulator' looks so interesting.  From the copy of the tool's designer Golan Levin:

The Admitulator is a custom tool for quantitatively evaluating university applicants according to a diverse array of weighted metrics. A pie chart is the core interface for ranking, sorting and evaluating applicants; it allows faculty with different admissions priorities to explore and negotiate different balances between applicant features (such as e.g. portfolio scores, standardized test scores, grade point averages, essay evaluations, etcetera).

By attempting to reconcile both the wide variability of prospective student's achievements, capabilities, and potential with the selector's differences and biases in their beliefs in what makes a successful student, (and one that contributes to the overall institution in a positive way), a tool like the Admitulator has the potential to really inform the college about its admission practices, decision processes, and their relative success or failure.

The tool doesn't 'tell' the college which students to admit, but rather provides insight as to the impact biases and widely-held (but never tested) beliefs in the admission process have on the composition of the incoming class.  Then, when later applied to the academic results of students admitted in this manner, it can help educate the admissions and faculty groups as to what screening metrics are more likely to identify successful students in the longer term.

It is kind of a neat tool.  

We all have our biases and preferences in the hiring process - advanced degrees trump skills (or vice versa), we only hire from certain colleges, or we only like to poach from a select few competitors.  But do we really know the impact of these biases? Do we know if there is a correlation between what we 'feel' and what actually happens?

Do we need a big, bad screening machine?

Hard Knocks - A Recruiting Tool?

A senior leader of your organization joking around with the administrative staff, an exchange highlighted by the staff mercilessly riding the leader over his weight.

A leadership meeting with the company owner and several high-ranking executives discussing (ad nauseum), how to deal with a high performing employee that has refused to come to work in a dispute over compensation.

An employee openly sharing, really oversharing, significant personal information including the fact that he is really not too sure how many children he has, and what their names are.

These scenes, and more, were all a part of the HBO Series 'Hard Knocks:Training Camp with the New York Jets', the latest installment of a long-running documentary series that gives football fans a look at the internal, behind the scenes, and normally hidden from view world of a professional football training camp.

What would compel a team to be willing to participate in such a project, and to possibly be exposed and potentially embarrassed by such a public airing of their normally private, and often highly secretive preparations for the upcoming season?  

Is it for the team's fans?

The show provides really interesting, and compelling entertainment if you are a supporter of the Jets, or even a fan of professional sports in general.  It is a way to kind of 'give back' to the fans, by sharing so openly at least some of the inner workings of the organization and its leaders, staff, and players.

The show does give fans a glimpse into the plans and strategies that the team hopes to employ, a view of the leadership and motivational methods of the coaching staff, and how ownership and executives evaluate talent, and make hiring and firing decisions.

Is it for the publicity?

Maybe.  But realistically in the US, everyone knows about the National Football League.  The start of the season is incredibly anticipated, and the season ending Super Bowl game is perennially the top rated television broadcast of the year, and is a de-facto national holiday. Truly, the world doesn't really need another show about football.

Is it for recruiting?

Bingo.

Jets Head Coach Rex Ryan described the show as a 'recruiting tool'.  The idea being that by participating in the show, and making visible all this behind the scenes information and making open, and really transparent coaching tactics, leadership styles, and the attitude of ownership towards staff and players, that potential new recruits to the organization will have a much, much better of how the team operates, what the coaches and players are like, and will be able to make a significantly better informed decision about their ability and willingness to 'fit in'.

Making a mistake in the hiring process is expensive for any organization.  For NFL teams it can be a million dollar mistake. Making a few potentially embarrassing documentary shows could be a small price to pay to avoid paying a bigger price down the line when some high-priced new talent doesn't pan out.

How far would you be willing to go, how honest and open are you willing to be to communicate what it is really like to work at your company, to be a member of the team, and what it takes to 'fit in' in your shop?

This far?

Coming and Going

Most HR or Recruiting functions calculate and report on standard metrics such as turnover rate, voluntary separations, turnover rate broken out by company function or location, source of applicants, source of hires, and other common measures of organizational effectiveness in the recruiting and retention process.

Many organizations also try to do a reasonably thorough job of tracking the reasons why employees leave the organization, often through the use of exit interviews.  Better opportunity elsewhere, lack of promotion chances, hating the boss, etc.

Aggregating, combining, distilling, and analyzing this kind of 'coming and going' data, when supplemented with analysis of individual and company performance can be a powerful differentiator, providing the organization's leaders with important competitive insight to inform hiring, development, and operational strategies.

That is, if the HR organization has the tools (possibly), analytical capability (maybe), and an understanding of the best way to present this kind of information in a method that is relevant, consumable, and engaging (oh boy).

Take a look at the image below, the infographic maps more than 4,000 moves both in and out of New York from over 1,700 people in the past decade based on an informal survey by New York public radio’s the Brian Lehrer Show.

The interactive chart captures the destination zip code for the move, whether the move was 'in' or 'out', the date of the move, and even the reason for the move to or from the particular zip code.

The chart also provides the ability to deep-dive into specific zip codes to analyze the overall patterns of migration as well as drilling into individual movements. We can see, for example, that in 2001 someone relocated from NYC 10014 to Tampa, Florida 33602 because the 'Rent was getting too high to stay'.

It is not a stretch for HR to re-invent this kind of graphic as the 'comings and goings' of new employees, and recently separated colleagues.  The zip codes in the chart could be replaced by company regions, locations, even senior leaders.  Examining the inflows and reason codes (curious how many people join and leave for the very same reason) in a graphical manner somehow energizes the information normally presented on simple report, or a bar chart.

While most HR organizations don't have the luxury of graphic or web designers on staff (too bad) to create these kinds of interactive tools to review, interact with, and even re-imagine data, it would benefit most of us in the business of providing and acting upon workforce and organizational information to do a better job of presenting the data in ways that help the data tell its story.

The full infographic can be found here - and be warned, it is a fun and engaging chart that you are likely to spend some time playing with to, and ultimately a kind of curiosity begins to set in as you try and get a closer look at the decisions and motivations of the real people whose experiences make up the data for the graphic.

Compelling, engaging, fun, and informative.  How many of those adjectives can you ascribe to the last report on turnover you sent up the chain, or that you received?

Rolling the Dice

Let's say you were,  after a lengthy tenure as a professional with one organization, suddenly and without time to prepare found yourself downsized, right-sized, or otherwise-sized and found yourself in the unenviable position of being out of work.

What are the first five things you would do?

And for now, let's eliminate from consideration any Johnny Paycheck - Steven Slater dramatic exits involving cursing out the customer or boss or flaming out on Facebook or YouTube.  Face it, you are probably not that creative or interesting.

1. Call your spouse/significant other/drinking buddies.

2. Process the key question of 'When was the last time I did a resume?'

3. Do an amazingly fast mental calculation estimating the length of time certain prized luxury items (boat/Harley/comic book collection) may be at risk, and what you could get for them on Craigslist.

4. Call drinking buddies again.

5. Look online for potential openings. 

I'd be willing to bet in those first five things you'd do immediately after being thrust into the role of job-seeker that you would likely hit up one of the major job boards and run a search for postings in your locality/industry/area of expertise.  In the USA that means Monster.com, Careerbuilder, Indeed, etc.  

But if you are in the broad category of IT professional, you'd certainly be all over Dice.com.  Dice has been the leading job site for IT professionals in the US for what seems like forever.  I personally found the most lucrative and long lasting IT contract I ever had on Dice.

A quick search of companies listing positions on Dice reads like page one of the list of the Fortune 500.

As a major job board in the IT industry, Dice enjoys top of mind status.  But we all know the world of recruiting and job advertising has changed dramatically.  The dawn of social and online professional networking, (essentially LinkedIn), has certainly affected how organizations and recruiters seek talent, and how individuals can find opportunities, connect with employers, and advance their careers.

Major boards like Dice are not immune to these changes, while seeking an opening on Dice or Monster might possibly be in the 'first five' things a job seeker would do, it seems more and more likely that actually making the needed connection to stand out in this incredibly tough job market can't really happen via the old-school job board.  Following, friending, liking, connecting - whatever you call it, to many these are the new paradigms in the job search.  

And the folks that run the big job boards understand this.  They're not stupid. They know the world is changing, and that their services have to change as well.  

Tonight at 8PM EDT on the HR Happy Hour Show we will talk with one of these leaders, Tom Silver, SVP of Dice.com to get a better perspective on how leaders of big boards assess the recruiting landscape, how they are meeting the new challenges, and how the overall market for IT work and workers is faring.

You can listen to the show on the show home page - here, or via the widget below:

You can call in to listen and participate - 646-378-1086.

I hope you can join us for what should be an interesting and informative look behind the scenes at Dice.com.