Talking Talent

Seth Godin has a suggestion worth considering: change the HR Department to a Talent Department.

His argument runs that in days of yore, factories consisted of people and machines. The goal was to use more machines, fewer people, and to design processes so that the people were interchangeable, low cost and easily replaced. The more leverage the factory-owner had, the better. Hence Personnel or HR. It views people as a natural resource, like lumber.

“Like it or not, in most organizations HR has grown up with a forms/clerical/factory focus. Which was fine, I guess, unless your goal was to do something amazing, something that had nothing to do with a factory, something that required amazing programmers, remarkable marketers or insanely talented strategy people.”

He says his suggestion to change HR to Talent makes some people uncomfortable because “it seems like spin, like gratuitous double speak. And, if you don’t change what you do, that would be true.”

“But what if you started acting like the VP of Talent? Understanding that talent is hard to find and not obvious to manage. The VP of Talent would have to reorganize the department and do things differently all day long (small example: talent shouldn’t have to fill out reams of forms and argue with the insurance company… talent is too busy for that… talent has people to help with that.)

Microsoft and Google both have a very healthy focus on finding and recruiting Talent. McDonald’s recently announced that they want to hire people who smile more. The first strategy works, the second won’t. Talent is too smart to stay long at a company that wants it to be a cog in a machine. Great companies want and need talent, but they have to work for it.

Jobvite, a provider of next-generation recruitment solutions, has published results of its 2008 Social Recruitment Survey.

Social recruitment is the practice of leveraging social and professional networks, online and offline, for talent acquisition.

The survey shows that the majority of companies (78%) are tapping social networks to find employees. The most common method of social hiring is leveraging employee networks through referrals - 75% of companies surveyed do so.

64 per cent of companies are making contacts through online social networks, predominantly LinkedIn (80%) and Facebook (36%).

When asked which techniques they plan to use more next year, 68% of recruiters said they will increase their use of referrals and employees’ networks. Overall, responses reveal that recruiters are already engaging in social recruitment using a range of methods, both online and offline.

But Jobvite says that most have yet to implement a comprehensive social recruitment strategy that fully leverages companies’ most valuable social networks – those of their employees.

The interesting thing here is that there is implicit endorsement in social networks as a recruitment tool. So, while most employers don’t want their staff flicking to Facebook and sending IM to their friends during work hours, at the same time they are encouraging employees to cultivate potential candidates.

I’ve been browsing through The Trump Blog (yes, a blog is born every minute, and it seems that even multi-billionaire property developers have time to blog!), and in it The Donald shares his thoughts about how to build great staff.

In recent years, I have built a public reputation for firing people. In all honesty, I put much more emphasis on hiring people and promoting those already working within the company. I think I’m a pretty good judge of character. When I interview people, I try to size them up fairly quickly. I don’t waste a lot of time on interviews because, although first impressions are lasting and often tell me immediately what I need to know about someone, every hire is a gamble.

Impressive credentials don’t always add up to a great performance or a good fit. I’ve had résumés that have blown me away and then, the real live person has done nothing once he or she has joined my staff. Likewise, nonexistent credentials don’t mean nonexistent talent. Being circumspect helps a lot and keeps you from being surprised. Time will do the weeding out for you. All you have to do is pay attention.

Donald Trump says that one of the characteristic he looks for in employees is a concern for the organization as a whole. “I admire employees who see themselves as having a direct relationship to the success or failure of the company they work for. When employees believe they are important to the company, their work reflects that loyalty.”
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Hear, hear, Donald.

If your company is finding it hard to attract the best and brightest talent, then look to Google as a guide.

Google has built an employment brand (not to mention its product brand) in just a few years, almost entirely through viral marketing.  The company has been named Fortune’s top company to work for in America and the result is more than 3,000 applications a day from people wanting to work from them.

HR management guru, Dr John Sullivan, explains employment branding as a “viral-based perception management program designed to attract top-quality applicants is based on the premise that the organization is well-managed in the eyes of the target candidate population.”

It has many critical elements, only one of which pertains to getting the message out through awards programs, editorial content in target publications, presentations at conferences, and through viral marketing driven via the employee referral program. It is not the same as recruitment marketing, although recruitment marketing should be aligned with the employment branding effort.”

IBM, GE, Disney, Southwest Airlines and HP have adopted similar viral marketing efforts.  How do they do this?  “Their managers are sought-after speakers, their management practices are written up in business and professional journals, and they all have at least one best-selling book written about their management practices,” says Dr Sullivan. (See Dr Sullivan’s list of the many benefits of employment-branding).

While most corporate recruiting managers spend less than 5 per cent of their budgets on employment branding, the companies who adopt a long-term strategic strategies don’t have a problem attracting the right people – they have the enviable ‘sorting challenge’ of deciding which talent to choose.

The race has never been more intense to acquire, develop, and retain long-term client relationships as the e-business evolution continues to redefine corporate models.

The last 10 years has spawned such buzzwords as: customer-centric, customer loyalty and client relationship management. While many companies are ‘customer-centric’ as a core value, I know of few that have ‘partner-centric’ as a core value.

And yet, partnering has proven to be one of the most powerful business tools for dealing with fast changing markets, technologies and customers. As the global economy speeds up, partnering is becoming the weapon of choice for today’s successful competitors.

There are, of course, many variations in partnering arrangements, from informal arrangements, through teaming agreements, outsourcing and joint ventures. Partnerships exist within and between industries and sectors – and are crucial in Australia’s highly competitive recruitment sector.

Being part of a globalised economy means doing things faster, cheaper and at world’s best practice. In order to be successful it is no longer enough to work within an organisation, we need to think outside in and develop relationships with key partners.

As companies across all sectors of Australia’s economy fight for their fair share of talent, recruitment agencies have risen to prominence in the minds of company leaders and HR professionals.  In a tight labour market, expert assistance is vital.

In the April edition of Human Capital Magazine, Iain Hopkins looks at what agencies do well, what they don’t do well, and what they need to improve.

He tells us that the most commonly heard gripes are unwelcome cold calling, putting forward inappropriate candidates, inexperienced consultants and recruitment cost blowouts.

But what does best practice in the recruitment industry look like?  Julie Mills, CEO of the RCSA, suggests that partnerships are the key.  Savvy HR managers need to look for other service offerings as part of the recruitment consultancy package, such as career counselling or business assistance.

“Recruiters have broadened their business offerings and part of that is because they want to be in partnerships. So ask: do they want to partner with you or are they talking to you because you are a person at the end of the service chain? The best recruitment company for your business is the one that mirrors your business standards,” Mills says.

The recruitment industry is certainly moving down the path of relationship and partnership building.  Good recruitment consultants work with a business to build solid long-term relationships and structures.  As the skills squeeze continues, and quality candidates become harder to find, recruitment companies and their clients need to work together to ensure they can source – and sustain - the very best talent.

Sometimes in order to effect change we need to see a dramatic and dire view of the consequences of our actions.

An Inconvenient Truth and The Stern Report moved the world to debate.  Because they were so ‘in your face’, both motivated people around the world to combat climate change and accept personal accountability for living an environmentally sustainable life.

I hope that those people who read the Living Longer Living Better Report will feel the same, as the ageing population could precipitate Australia’s economic and social decline.

This report, developed in conjunction with IBM, is intended as a contribution to the debate around the challenges of an ageing population and how they can be dealt with.  It’s aimed at policy makers, business leaders and social commentators and while it reflects a world position, it draws particular attention to the issues in Europe (although its author, Dr Chris Gibbon, has been in Australia talking about the impacts here).

With declining fertility and regressive employment practices in operation for decades, the solutions to these challenges will not take effect overnight. The economic and social (metaphorical) ‘super-tanker’ will take years to be turned around, so we need to change course now.

The issue of an ageing workforce is particularly pertinent in the recruitment industry, as it affects the quantity and quality of skilled people available. We know now that the problem is not a skills shortage - it is a population shortage.  Finding ways to tap into the global talent pool is an imperative.

Hello world and welcome to my new blog, Talking Talent.

The term ’skills shortage’ has dominated Australia’s business landscape for a number of years.  But what does it mean for Australia in the long term?  How can we capitalise on the pool of talent we already have?  And how can we overcome the labour constrictions we currently face to ensure our economic prosperity both now and into the future?

A skills shortage, in plain and simple terms, means that businesses are struggling to fill vacancies.  Skills shortages are occurring across Australia’s economy – both in the trades and the professions.  We simply don’t have enough architects, plumbers, engineers, nurses, computer programmers, teachers and electricians to go around.

In the latest report from the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, the occupations showing the biggest increase in vacancies were medical and science technical officers (including radiologists, hospital pharmacists, sonographers and dental technicians), organisation and information professionals (such as project managers and specialists in Java, Internet Security and PeopleSoft) and accountants and auditors. But almost every industry is affected in some way, particularly in regional areas.

According to the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s Survey of Investor Confidence, skills shortages are the number one constraint on small and medium business investment.

In knowledge economies such as Australia, where skills are fundamental to competitiveness, skills shortages can reduce productivity and increase inflation.  As the pool of available workers dries up, salaries skyrocket and so do the prices of the associated products and services.

So, what’s the solution?  Over the next few months, Talking Talent will explore ideas and options to secure Australia’s talent base.  And I invite you to join the conversation.