Managing a financial portfolio takes increasing skill, risk tolerance and foresight. Whether you’re working with a financial advisor or not, active participation is required. Decisions are not easy but one thing is clear when it comes to good financial planning – diversifying your portfolio is a smart thing to do. In uncertain times it’s even more important.
Similarities can be drawn between portfolio diversification and designing smart talent strategies to develop a diversified talent portfolio. Most importantly, it’s the absence of risk that adds risk. In a financial portfolio, risk avoidance can lead to missing out on significant gains or realizing significant losses. Taking the time to clarify your goals, be honest about the level of risk your willing to assume, design a diversified portfolio, make ongoing contributions, pursue a long-term strategy, periodically reassess and rebalance the portfolio, and leave room to play (so you can take advantage of interesting opportunities) will help to ensure you realize your financial future and keep you engaged in the journey.
Risk-smart of risk-averse Now, let’s look at the similarities in how talent strategies are designed. In an effort to avoid risk, companies make narrowly defined decisions about how, where and when they invest in talent. Developing clearly stated goals around talent acquisition is often the first obstacle to overcome. Without an integrated workforce planning capability, decisions are often reactive, expensive, and lead to either not enough of the right talent at the right time or too much of the wrong talent at the wrong time. But, lets assume there is a workforce plan in place. Is the plan risk-smart or risk-averse? Here’s the difference. A risk-averse plan would identify the talent needed to support attrition, succession planning, growth, reinvestment in existing talent, and decisions around when, where and how to invest in talent acquisition. If the strategy is progressive, there’s also a talent-pooling component. Keep in mind that very few organizations pursue this level of strategy and planning. The risk-averse plan sounds pretty good, right? So what’s the risk-smart plan? In the risk-averse plan the talent function is doing many of the right things to deliver value to the organization. The key difference? The risk-smart plan includes a very important distinction – diversification.
Talent portfolio diversification
Identifying a goal for the percent of talent you’ll recruit in to the organization that will come from varied backgrounds, skills, and experiences moves the organization towards a risk-smart talent portfolio. This same thinking can and should be applied to internal talent movement. The advantage a risk-smart approach brings to the organization is a subset of Talent who have the potential to bring different perspectives to the business and can help fuel innovation and breakthrough thinking. Too often, hiring managers and recruiters pursue people who have been in the exact job that is open. That’s fine, to a point, but often it results in applying the same thinking, which doesn’t always help to inspire new ideas, broaden perspective and drive innovation. Recall the Einstein quote, “You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created.” By not diversifying the company’s talent portfolio organizations can impede their own progress and assume a riskier trajectory over time in their effort to reduce risk.
Here’s an example from the HR space. Many technology companies only want to hire HR leaders who have come from technology companies. The same story can easily play out in healthcare, entertainment, financial services, consumer package goods, retail……get the picture. The main point is this – someone who has experience in other industries, or even other functional areas, brings a more expansive knowledge-base that results in something many technology companies cherish – innovative practices. Diversified, creative thinking has often been at the heart of the company’s birth. Yet at some point they become increasingly risk-averse, especially in HR. As I’ve heard the “why” described it is often not that different than how other companies would describe their unique challenges. Will there be an initial learning curve? Yes! Are there specifics to the business that are unique? Yes? But, the right person can get up to speed quickly and new skills can be developed. Along the way, if the person brings the required leadership skills, has a proven track-record and is a cultural fit, the individual, team and company are transformed and all will benefit. It’s through this immersion and learning process that amazing things can happen. New questions are asked. New insights are made. New discoveries unfold and new opportunities are identified. Current thinking and processes are challenged. The world is looked at through a new lens and the opportunity for transformational change is enhanced. Operating in an uncertain world undergoing dramatic change requires a diversified perspective fueled my fresh thinking. Holding on to “what is” while everything around you is changing will not help the organization realize its potential.
Diversifying a talent portfolio requires building strong partnerships and trust with business leaders and the CFO. Start small and find internal champions. Help prepare them by developing a strong on-boarding process and immersion to enculturate new talent. Partner with the CFO to gain support and mitigate risk. This is one aspect of defining an opportunity cost of talent, which focuses on the benefits derived by the business rather than on expense. Take the time to think about talent adjacencies, how to assess experiences that led to differentiated business results, benefits gained through work on special projects, and demonstrated ability to ramp-up quickly. Each of these are indicators of future potential and can be quite valuable to the overall talent portfolio. Looking at each of these indicators and then mapping talent to the organization’s cultural will help ensure success.
The end game
What better time than now to think more broadly about talent and begin developing a risk-smart portfolio. The breadth of talent on the market today and your company’s ability to capture attention and engage a diverse mix of prospects can align more easily than during highly competitive environments. You’ll also be helping to position your company for long-term success. Start slow, identify your champions and demonstrate how you’ll support the strategy. In the end, by being risk-averse there is potentially greater risk in the talent strategy, which ultimately transfers to the business strategy and the organization’s long–term success. After all, is your talent strategy focused solely on today or where the company wants to be tomorrow?
One of the key takeaways from Talent Camp was the role that HR can play in enabling and leading collaborative work environments. Not only is the time appropriate for HR to take this on but it’s critical that they step up to lead the way. By enabling collaborative work environments, HR assumes a role in advancing the organization’s innovation capabilities, which can increase competitive agility and deliver enhanced value to the bottom line. Ultimately, culture determines the organization’s effectiveness, capability and future. Before narrowing in on the role of HR it’s valuable to take a look at what comprises and influences organizational culture.
Organizational Culture
Every organization has a story to tell. How things get done. How people think. How decisions are made. What conversations sound like. Who is interacting with whom. A composite of the attitudes, behaviors, experiences, values and beliefs that influence how the company operates and accomplishes its business objectives. Layer upon layer, just like an archaeological dig, each of these threads works together to tell the company’s story. Culture is shaped and influenced over time by company founders and leaders. In some instances its shaped by a deliberate, intentional vision. In others, culture is shaped organically. Either way it becomes the DNA of the organization. As a company matures, new leaders shape culture through tangible and intangible actions. Social, technical, economic, political and global events also affect culture through related events. Awareness of organizational culture has grown over time. Culture has become a common and important characteristic to companies promoting their employment brand and to job seekers considering employment options. The latter may sound surprising during the current economic situation but I think people weigh choices differently, especially when it comes to how and where they invest time to build their careers.
Culture plays such a significant role within an organization, people will work hard to protect the company’s culture – consciously or unconsciously, sometimes not even realizing what it is they’re trying to protect. During times of transformation this can be quite limiting and costly to an organization. When culture isn’t nurtured and allowed to evolve organically it can impede growth, interfere with competitive capabilities, make it more challenging to attract desired talent – and even cloud information around the type of talent that is needed, and lead to turnover of good people. Now, it may be true that an organization deliberately chooses not to allow its culture to evolve. That’s fine as long as it’s a deliberate decision and the consequences are recognized as well. Its also important to note that culture can evolve without compromising the organization. It doesn’t have to be an all or nothing change. By identifying core components of the culture that continue to add organizational value along with where there is an opportunity for the culture to evolve and add greater value, the company and employees can be served more fully.
Time for Cultural Change – Collaboration
Are the organization’s needs and potential being met by the existing culture? As we head into a new year and a new decade, its valuable to reflect on how your company kept pace with the amount of change that has taken place over the past ten years. What are the social, technological, economic and global trends that have had a major impact on the way business gets done? What about the way people interact – personally and at work? Will the culture continue to support the company’s needs over the next 5 – 10 years? What about the people that make the business happen each day? Or, is the culture impeding progress and the ability to attract and retain the talent that will be needed to compete effectively. If the organization’s culture has not changed while everything around it has is that good? Will the culture help to prepare the company for a successful future? Maybe yes and maybe no. If the tough questions aren’t asked and answered objectively and honestly then where does that leave the company?
To be clear, I’m not suggesting that culture should be so malleable that it’s constantly changing. On the contrary, I’m suggesting that a strong culture allows for evolution and change. One of the most important questions to ask of culture in today’s organization is how effectively it supports collaboration and if the company’s leaders embrace the idea of a collaborative environment. People have more opportunities to connect, share ideas and create content than during any other time in history. They have easy access to information and can, in most instances, quickly find the answer or gain knowledge on a variety of subjects simply by typing a question into Google or tapping their networks. This is the current and evolving state of the workforce. Social networking and online collaboration is influencing the way people interact, access information and work together to make things happen. So, what happens when they go to work? Does the culture of the organization align with what people value? Does it support access to information and connections?
The Role of HR and Collaborative Environments Where does responsibility for culture sit within an organization? Who will recognize if and when the culture has an opportunity or need to evolve? I believe the responsibility should sit with HR and will even go as far as saying its one of the more important contributions that HR can make to their organization’s health, success and longevity. What is the HR functions role in shaping organizational culture? Does HR lead the evolution of culture? Do they have the capability to shape culture and enable organizational effectiveness? Or, does HR focus on trying to protect “something” in an effort to reduce risk and maintain the status quo? My guess is that there’s room for debate!
From my perspective, this is where the value contribution from HR can soar. Leading a culture evolution can reflect HRs capacity to bring together significant trends influencing the workforce, current and future, and the organization’s need for increased competitiveness, agility and innovation – all elements of a successful future. Establishing a collaborative environment is dependent on how people interact, how work evolves, how diverse perspectives are engaged, and how leaders are developed to bring out the best in people to guide the organization to success. Each of these is at the heart of where HR adds leadership and value to an organization’s success. As a collaborative environment is shaped and embraced, the organization will benefit from increased interaction, idea generation, broader perspectives around problem solving, and a more expansive approach to planning for market and product growth, or contraction. As HR helps to shape the organization’s culture it contributes directly to its own evolution in the company and is well positioned as a key contributor to long-term success.
If culture is allowed to evolve through nurturing or unfold organically to reflect changes in broader societal and technical trends then its time to take a deep look at how things are getting done. What story does your company want to tell?
Last week a group of unique people from the talent space came together for the first Talent Camp to delve into transformational work – building the talent function of the future. I’ll get deeper into the ”work” in the next post but I wanted to share something else remarkable that came out of Talent Camp …… community. The mission behind Talent Camp was to bring together a group of smart, passionate people and explore what the talent function would look like if the catalyst behind its “new” existence were a business need. A call to action, if you will, that positions the talent function at the heart of transforming the organization to meet the growing demands presented by the shifts taking place across the business and societal landscapes – driving organizational effectiveness.
The setting on the Oregon Coast was spectacular and a metaphor for our transformational work. A wave is not independent from the ocean just as the organization cannot be separated from the talent that brings it to life each day to drive its success. And, the Coast with all of its remarkable elements is in a state of perpetual change and interdependence. Our meeting place, a 4500 sq. ft. beach house, would serve as a place to open minds and facilitate discussion over the course of 2 ½ days. It would also mean that each of us participating in Talent Camp, who in most cases didn’t know one another, would need to quickly establish a foundation for honest, challenging and meaningful dialogue. We devoted our first evening session to establishing group agreements. What time would we begin each day? How much personal time was needed / desired? What was important to each of us in providing an environment that nurtured productive dialogue? What values do we hold around collaboration and communication? And, what would be our comfort level with connecting to the outside world via social media while we were together? This was not an easy conversation. Not because the group was reluctant to discuss it but because their hunger to dive head first into our primary discussion was evident and bursting through, so we took a meandering path. This was time well spent and provided an important foundation that would serve us well over the course of our time together.
What was remarkable was the ease with which the group came together. Every aspect of what would be necessary to be together for this period of time was met with ease. Everyone naturally assumed roles as needed to ensure our shared environment was conducive to being together and immersing ourselves in the work we had come together to explore. Our days were long and our formal conversations began at 9 or 10 am and went until 10 pm. The group’s collective energy created a respectful environment for honest, tough dialogue yet work and play seemed to fuse together as one. We organically found a balance between structure and openness that allowed us to challenge assumptions, wrestle with paradigms, tear things down, and begin again – after all this was transformational work and the path is not linear but an iterative process that unfolds through a process of discovery. People stepped up to lead discussions and everyone stayed engaged and committed to crafting a vision for the future of the talent function, that ultimately led to more questions than answers. There was an ease and a comfort that each person helped to foster through their engagement and persistent commitment to the group dynamics.
Social media played a significant role in how this group came together. With the exception of two people, who I knew, each connection to people attending Talent Camp began with a relationship that grew out of social networking. I do believe that the insight we gain through social networking interactions are quite revealing and in this case helped to bring together a unique group who worked collaboratively to advance a critical conversation around the future of the talent function.
Part 2 of Talent Camp will get into our discoveries and outcomes.
The second Social Recruiting Summit will take place in New York on Monday, Nov. 16th. If you missed the sold-out Summit at the Googleplex this summer don’t wait too long to check out the agenda and register. The Summit topics and conversations will challenge your thinking about recruiting, give you an opportunity to network, learn from recruiting leaders and take away ideas that will help shape your thinking about the future of recruiting…..social recruiting. Follow Summit happenings on Twitter @socrecruiting and track the conversations through #socialrecruiting.
Here’s a preview of my session and I hope to see you there! Is social recruiting just another sourcing tool—a way to promote job postings and find potential candidates? Or is it a pathway to building a sustainable talent community and another tipping point in the evolution in recruiting?
The tools we have access to today deliver benefits that you won’t find through other sourcing vehicles. Harnessing the true power of social networking is about active talent communities. Talent communities provide a forum that enhances the relationship between candidates and your brand by inviting talent to engage in conversation rather than transactional activities and messaging.
In this interactive session, we’ll take all 200+ of you and create a massive brainstorming community of our own. We’ll look at community development through the eyes of talent and the organization. By organizing into sub-groups we’ll leverage our collective intellect to tackle key questions and begin shaping a sustainable recruiting strategy.
Some of the questions we’ll address include:
How can you attract talent to your community, engage them, and give them a reason to keep returning?
How can talent be inspired to help you grow the network?
How will you convert a community member to a hire?
How can your company approach social recruiting to build a sustainable strategy?
How can the recruiting function create greater value for the organization?
The growth, adoption, and momentum of social networking over the past 18 months brings another round of significant change for recruiting departments. The first question that needs to be answered is whether or not you believe social networking is all hype or if it will result in lasting change. Then you can answer the question, “If social networking is here to stay, is it right for our organization?”
Some look at the social networking trend and say that it’s all a bunch of hype. Some look at it and feel the need to, and will try to, be everywhere. Some will consciously decide to be nowhere — we have the phone and that works very well, thank you. Many are feeling overwhelmed by what’s happening, the pace of change, and the fears about transparency. In most cases you don’t need to be and shouldn’t be everywhere. And, you may decide to be nowhere, but make sure that’s a conscious decision and not just resistance to inevitable change.
As for fear of social networking, the pace of change and transparency, think of it this way — whether you engage your brand in the discussion or not, the conversation moves on — nothing stands still, except that eventually people may just not care about your brand at all, and, well, at that point you won’t need to recruit anyways. If you want to influence the conversation about your brand and if you want to engage people in your brand story, then social networking has a lot to offer. The complete article featured in the Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership October issue, will delve further into that, but here are my more brief thoughts for the time being.
Social Media and Social Networking: Strategy or Tactics
The underlying premise of this article is that social networking is not a passing fad and that it deserves significant positioning in your talent attraction and management strategy.
Let me begin my differentiating, for the purposes of this article, the difference between social media and social networking. The terms are often used interchangeably, but I see an important distinction, especially for recruiting. Social networking is the application of social media, which provides the tools to share content and information, engage in conversations, and build networks. The key difference is what you choose to do after sharing your information. Social networking is pursued with the underlying intention of dialogue, engagement, and interest. It also results in a more sustainable talent strategy that differentiates your brand and brings forward many other business benefits. If you are simply pushing jobs out to Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn, you are socializing job postings by using social media, but not necessarily engaging in social networking. If you’re engaging prospective talent in discussions and building active communities, you are pursuing a social networking strategy.
There’s also a significant difference between the two that influences how you design an effective strategy and how you define your desired outcome. Social media is in part strategic but mostly tactical and is really saying: “Hey, these are new channels through which we can reach people and we should broadcast our jobs.”
That may be fine, but it limits the value and doesn’t fully realize the potential or move you toward a sustainable solution. Also, and most importantly, when you use social media there is an expectation for networking! If you push a job out on Twitter and someone reaches out to you, they expect a response. When you don’t respond, the brand can be viewed unfavorably and over time this type of behavior will dilute the brand reputation and value.
This is similar to what job seekers expected with the introduction of corporate recruitment websites. They wanted a way to reach and connect with someone in a company they were interested in joining. Remember all the discussions about the “black hole of recruiting”? Well, in a social world, the expectations and consequences are higher. And, while today’s job market may be in favor of the employer, the cycle will turn again and the strategy that you develop and implement today will absolutely impact future talent attraction effectiveness — positively or negatively. If you want to develop a sustainable talent acquisition strategy and actively invest in the longevity of your brand, then it’s time to engage.
They Really Are Interested in You — Really!
The evolution of technology, social tools, and ease of access are driving rapid advancements in communication. People like to play, create, share, and comment about your company and brand. The fear you may be feeling about letting people “in” to your brand, so to speak, can be looked at one of two ways. You can either be fearful of what they may do to your brand, which “they” will do anyways, or, you can celebrate that people are interested in your brand, products, and services. Listen to what they have to say. You may learn something. Engage them in your business challenges; they may solve them for you. Yes, they want to hang out with you — if, that is, you have something interesting to say! A UK student who found his job through Twitter shared this with me:
Personally, the companies that I’ve been most interested in have been the ones that are blogging and therefore appear to be knowledgeable industry leaders … also, some companies have begun posting jobs on blogs, which I think is better than on a recruitment website or in a newspaper, because the candidates applying have read the blog and are interested in the company.
Now, that’s something to think about. Does silence imply your company has nothing interesting to say? That you’re not knowledgeable about your industry? Pursuing a social strategy isn’t just a way to attract and engage talent. It can also be a way to expand the innovative capacity of your organization — perhaps something we should consider as the talent function evolves.
Clearly the impact of “social” is still emerging and the potential is just beginning to be understood — although it’s already profound. We are still at the edge of what the social media wave will bring. The potential for sweeping change is enormous. We will certainly see the future impacted and unfolding before our eyes.
You’ll find the complete article in the October edition of the ERE Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership. You can subscribe to the Journal or to purchase this article only please contact the editor, Todd Raphael.
How effectively is today’s HR function meeting organizational business needs? How about the individual and collective needs and capability of the organization’s workforce? How can a global CEO study indicate that Talent is the most critical imperative, ranking high above access to capital, (see pg 24 of the exec summary) and at the same time reports are emerging that upwards of 60% of employees would leave their jobs when the economy improves? Increasingly, Talent is disconnected, underutilized, over managed, dispensable and bored. And, companies are not realizing the value in their workforce by merely creating a place for work to be done. Where is the excitement around business? Around new ideas? Innovation? Collaboration? Competition? How frequently have talented employees left a company to give birth to a successful venture on their own – could the idea not be born internally? Can we create a true entrepreneurial culture that supports internal incubators and reward innovation? What’s driving the disconnect and when will business get serious about the value to be realized in attracting, engaging and leveraging individual and collective capability? When will organizations recognize there is greater reward than risk in hiring for potential rather than always hiring to fit the round peg in the round hole and that the same approach applied to successful, innovative business practices can and should be applied to talent practices?
As the ecosystem within which companies operate continues to test and challenge the ability of organizations of all sizes to attract, engage and leverage talent how has the HR function stepped up to lead the way? Today’s business environment persistently demands more from people and their companies. What is the new leadership model at the intersection of HR, Talent and business? And, yet, how many companies have truly evolved their internal environments to navigate the waters of the business environment they operate in today and will be faced with tomorrow? This article from BusinessWeek raises some very relevant questions about R&D. Where is the relationship between R&D leaders, the HR function, the CFO and CEO to set a vision that prepares for the future? Any business issue today is also a Talent issue. How will we create adaptive practices that support continuous evolution that better keep pace with an increasingly shifting world with so much to offer, so many opportunities and filled with so many unique challenges?
The Big What If I like to ask “what if” questions, a lot! It helps me imagine different realities, explore new possibilities and develop differentiated solutions. The BIG “what if” question I’ve been tossing around? Here’s part one – What if the HR function didn’t exist? Lets just imagine this for a minute. Some how business has been able to survive all these years without an HR function. New employees were still hired. Internally, people were paid on time and appropriately. Employees had access to development opportunities and internal movement happened as needed/desired. Things just happened, maybe not in an exciting way but we plodded along and managed. Now, part two – What if the HR function didn’t exist today BUT a business need was identified that recognized there was a synergistic relationship to be leveraged with talent in a way that would drive adaptive business practices. That would drive personal engagement, job satisfaction, creativity, collaboration, innovation and competitive advantages stemming from a talent-centric organization aligned through shared values and a clear vision.
Needless to say, this is a BIG what if! It’s also a critical question to explore during uncertain times that, to a large degree, has widened the gap between the organization and its current and prospective employees. The result of which does not look good from any perspective – and certainly not if you gaze into the future and wonder what will be different.
Talent Camp About a year ago I began kicking around the idea of Talent Camp – bringing together an intimate group of keen minds with a unique orientation and passion for Talent, business and the HR discipline. All things happen for a reason and in this case I’m particularly pleased that circumstances resulted in Talent Camp being a 2009 venture because there are a few people
involved that I didn’t know last year. On October 18th, 12 incredible people will come together for 3 1/2 days to explore the BIG “what if”. Collectively we have more years, depth and breadth of business and HR experience than I can begin to measure. We also share a strong passion for what could exist at the intersection of talent and business to serve both interests and advance organizational capability and effectiveness. We’ll be gathering in a 4500 square foot beach house on the Oregon Coast to immerse in a dialogue around our big “what if” question, that will no doubt experience the ebb and flow of progress, frustration, curiosity, pain, breakthroughs and clarity as we craft our talent function vision.
What can you expect out of Talent Camp? Well, that’s something that we’ll be defining while we’re together. My goal, hope and desire is that we’ll be publishing a collective work outlining the talent function required for business in the 21st century.
I am so pleased and excited about the incredible collection of people who have committed to join me at Talent Camp. I’m sure you’ll be hearing more from them and can follow each on Twitter (their names are linked) and look for #TalentCamp to follow the conversation.
More risk exists in standing still than in moving forward. We are the future and its time to craft the vision at the intersection of Talent, HR and Business. Talent Camp!
Think about a brand that you admire. What comes to mind? How do you feel when you interact with the brand’s product or service? How about when you interact directly with the brand through their website, retail store, phone service, advertising or other means of outreach? Brands are emotive and most people like brands that make them feel good, are dependable, provide some desired combination of quality and value, and have a fun factor.
Now, think about your company’s recruitment process. What does the candidate experience feel like? At the most basic level, is it efficient? Respectful? Is it easy for a candidate to get to know your company in a meaningful way? Has appropriate attention been paid to the importance of design? Are the job descriptions well written? Do they get the candidate excited? Can the candidate see not only how their work contribution benefits the company but also what opportunities employment could provide? Would they be excited enough about what they’ve learned to tell someone else? Keep in mind that these elements only begin to address the front-end of your brand experience. If you don’t have a clear talent philosophy and process that delivers brand continuity through each point in the application and interview process, your front-end experience will be quickly diluted.
If you read my post on Adaptive Talent Strategies you know that employment branding is one of the key elements. In that post I discussed the importance of resource allocation, technology and process design to developing an adaptive strategy. An adaptive talent strategy provides you an architecture to meet the evolving needs of business and develop a value-oriented talent function. The employment brand is a key component of the strategy. Closely related is the use of networks, which has been increasing in importance to the brand and establishing an adaptive, sustainable approach – see the post on community managers.
Employment Brand and Networks Employment brand and networks are tightly linked and should not be looked at as being independent from each other. We also should not lose site of what’s at the center of the external employment brand and networks – the prospective employee. And, yet, most candidates have less than desirable experiences with a company. The job seeker’s experience will directly affect the company’s current and future competency in attracting and hiring the talent they desire. This starts with the front-end experience and all too often deteriorates further as the candidate moves forward and expresses interest in a job. The fact is that most corporate recruitment sites have become incredibly boring. They’re flat, static and lack engaging attributes. Very few catch your attention and draw you in. I can hear the arguments. “But, we’re not really hiring now.” ”We don’t have the resources.” ”Business is way off.” These may all be true but there other important truths. What doesn’t happen today will be significantly more costly tomorrow because it will be much harder for you to catch up and secure the talent you need when you need it, which is why brand and networks are part of an adaptive strategy. Ultimately, the job seeker doesn’t care what your issues are – they only want a good experience and to be treated respectfully as they move through the application and, potentially, the interview process. Even making relatively small investments today will provide exponential value tomorrow. Think of it this way. After connecting with friends on Facebook, exchanging tweets on Twitter, or connecting on LinkedIn they come to your website. Does it measure up? Is the experience as interactive and engaging or does it feel like it needs an infusion of energy?
Moving from Fragmentation to Integration The first place to look is at your corporate recruitment site – the center of your employment brand for prospective talent. Aesthetic design, the application of technical elements and community spaces haven’t continued to evolve. I do like Microsoft’s new site, and am still playing around on it. The job search integration is sweet. I also had a sneak peak at what Steve Fogarty is getting ready to launch at adidas and can only say that it will significantly raise the bar….stay tuned. In many instances, brands have become fragmented through the introduction of new channels that are shifting quickly, but also important to connecting with prospective talent. The model included below provides a view into the complexity of the recruitment ecosystem. The corporate career site is at the core and each of the spokes shooting off from the center are brand touchpoints. While it certainly isn’t necessary to be represented through every touchpoint it is important to understand who your trying to reach, what they do online and what is brand appropriate for your company. However, This approach will help you capture and drive the most relevant job seekers to your site and set the stage for providing a positive experience. Integrating a set of touchpoints into the corporate career site and supporting bi-directional links delivers a more enhanced brand experience and adds value. The dashed line circling the corporate career site and intersecting with each touchpoint represents the tools used to communicate and manage (CRM), support viral behavior (sharing), and push out content (RSS). Lastly, implementing an SEO and SEM strategy will advance visibility for your brand and drive relevant traffic to your site in a very cost effective manner.
Evolution Ideally, the corporate career site has an embedded community. Extending the corporate career platform to support actively engaging job seekers in a dialogue is simply an evolutionary step. Why not engage job seekers in a discussion about the company, its products and services? What are you proud of? What problems are you trying to solve? What are you working on? Wouldn’t this type of interaction be more rewarding then having someone stop by for a visit and read, watch or listen to what you have to say? Blogging is a good way to begin. If your interested in learning more about how to incorporate a blogging strategy here’s a link to the Definitive Guide to Corporate HR Blogging. I had an opportunity to work on this guide with Ben Yoskovitz of Standout Jobs. Trust me, blogging is hard work and can take a lot of time but there is value in staying the course to develop your voice and a regular writing habit – I’ll let you know when I’m there! You’ll find that there are a lot of opportunities for companies to enlist a variety of voices as part of a blogging strategy that can make developing a diverse mix of content much more manageable.
As your thinking about your recruitment strategy, the talent your trying to reach and the experience you want to create, think about your favorite brand and how it makes you feel. Then, go to your website with the “eyes of your job seeker” and experience the brand. Are you smiling?
Developing a strong, clear, engaging employment brand can be the difference between a whisper getting whipped around in a breeze and a crank-up the volume, highly amplified message, metaphorically speaking, to attract the best talent to your organization. That doesn’t mean you have to get out the megaphone and scream from the rooftops, but it does mean you need to get better at targeted positioning to catch the attention of prospective talent and move them to action. EnticeLabs has a technology called TalentSeekr that will help you do just that – without having to grab your megaphone!
I had a chance to talk with Joshua Westover of Entice and Steve Fogarty of adidas about TalentSeekr and Steve’s pilot campaign while we were in Las Vegas last month for the Kennedy Recruitment conference. Here’s their story about TalentSeekr. You can read mine following the video and the last paragraph captures Steve’s results.
What’s your brand story? Crafting a great brand story begins by knowing your company’s culture, what attracts people to seek employment with you, why people stay with you, and articulating what sets you apart from the competition. How you engage prospective talent in your brand story occurs through a number of different touch points. It could be your corporate career site, social networking sites, blogs, job boards, Google Adwords, video, etc. Even the biggest and best brands need to work harder than ever to keep this a streamlined, efficient process that produces a solid ROI – converting prospects to hires. The persistent increase in the number of channels that companies need to engage in has made this process not only more complex but more expensive, harder to manage and harder to track.
Once you have your brand story articulated there are four elements that will help your marketing and advertising strategy produce more value: positioning, reach, relevancy, and experience. Positioning is important to make sure your brand will be seen by the talent your trying to attract. Reach is your ability to expansively target the talent your aiming for – narrow and deep to broad and deep. Relevancy ensures that your brand is reaching the most interested, best-fit prospects based on skill, interests and work experience. And, lastly, “experience” is providing a brand experience that results in an emotional connection that moves the prospect to action – expressing interest in your brand and career opportunities. The ability to break through the environmental noise in order to not only reach the talent you’re company needs but for that talent to take notice and act is where the true value comes in. Its also one of the most challenging aspects of employment brand advertising. The days of jobs, and job seekers, ending up in the classifieds or on a few key job boards are long gone. Plus, if you want to reach a more passive prospect your going to need a more sophisticated approach to reach them and capture their attention.
How relevant and targeted is your brand strategy? Through TalentSeekr, EnticeLabs offers a sleek and effective approach to targeted employment brand positioning that provides companies a streamlined, intelligent approach to zero in on the talent their trying to reach. TalentSeekr applies geographic, contextual, behavioral and social media profile-targeting to deliver the highest ROI on each of your digital campaigns. By combining these four targeting capabilities, TalentSeekr automatically addresses positioning, reach and relevancy through location, targeted key words and site preferences (think Facebook, LinkedIn, User Groups….). As Joshua Westover of EnticeLabs says, ” We can get as broad as a nation or as narrow as a building”. EnticeLabs begins by collecting information from the recruiter about a job or a job category to develop a highly relevant positioning strategy. They’ll work with you to understand key markets (talent and geography) and create text, image, picture, video or flash ads that will appeal to passive and active seekers. (examples to the right from an adidas campaign)
Then, TalentSeekr automatically generates an engagement page that serves as a “storyboard” type concept to enhance the prospect’s experience with your company’s brand. Through the engagement page, TalentSeekr weaves together video, photos, referral capability, and links to your career site, job posting, community interface or any other digital real estate to which you want to drive traffic that results in a valuable employment experience.
Does your candidate experience measure up? So, sit back and think about this for a minute. A prospect logs into their gmail account or Facebook profile and sees a highly relevant ad. They click on the ad and get a cool video and pictures about your company and / or product. They get information in another panel on the page that talks about your company culture. Another panel may invite them to join your community. And, there’s also a job link. How do you think the prospect is feeling about your company and the career opportunities after that experience? Probably pretty enticed! (yes, pun intended!) Don’t get hung up on thinking that you need to go out and produce a professional video. The more real the video the more effective it is in creating emotional engagement between the prospect and your brand. Flip cameras are about $100 and create great videos. Also, chances are that your company has some cool product videos that you could use (like the video used by adidas in their engagement page above). If the videos are interesting and relevant to the roles your focused on then why not use them?
Are you also beginning to see how TalentSeekr serves as a brand equalizer! While the graphics here represent adidas, a very well known and respected brand, the more relevant the placement, the better the brand attraction and the stronger the brand engagement experience. Brands of all sizes can overcome what traditionally has felt like a “big brand” advantage to become equal in appeal and attraction strength.
Is brand intelligence on your side? TalentSeekr also gets smarter with age. The longer a campaign is run the more data TalentSeekr has to refine your positioning, ensuring that your receiving the highest ROI. While TalentSeekr can be applied successfully to specific jobs it’s even more effective if you think of job categories and integrate your marketing strategy with a talent pipelining or community building strategy. Think about the power of this integrated with your talent planning strategy and CRM tool! Through the Talent Seekr dashboard (below) you can track the effectiveness of your campaigns. TalentSeekr automatically reallocate advertising dollars so the brand placements that are driving the best traffic (not just volume but relevant traffic) will receive more impressions and in the end you’ll have a highly relevant pool of prospects and a data set that will inform future campaigns. You can also work closely with the EnticeLabs team and play a more active role in how ad placements are reallocated.
(Dashboard shows sample data for demonstrations only)
In the first campaign Steve ran through TalentSeekr for adidas they focused on a very difficult to fill position. In fact, it was a position that in the past had required outsourcing to executive search. Within two weeks adidas had attracted a number of highly relevant, top quality candidates and converted one to a hire and filled the position. The prospect adidas hired had seen the ad on their Gmail page and was so taken by the experience and highly relevant content they were blown away. Relevancy rules!
Designing an Approach to Excellence in Talent Attraction, Planning and Management
How effective is your talent strategy in supporting the business needs of your company?
Are you aligned with your company’s business strategy?
Do you have the information you need to anticipate the key skills and competencies that will competitively position your company?
Read on to learn about the workshop and how to register. I hope to see you there! Susan
The Workshop:
Excellence in recruitment and talent leadership is a critical business function for leading companies regardless of industry, size or geography. Alignment, agility, speed and creativity are essential for building and executing an adaptive talent strategy. Here’s what your workshop experience will look like:
We’ll begin by exploring top-line trends and influencers affecting talent acquisition and management strategies.
You’ll be introduced to a flexible model that serves as a roadmap to developing a holistic and adaptive framework.
We’ll actively discuss key steps and decisions to develop and apply a roadmap from which you can approach broad-sweeping or more targeted components to support a successful and adaptive strategy.
And, we’ll delve in to a situational planning exercise to leverage our collective insight and your learning experience.
Expect to be an active participant in small and large group discussions. Through collective learning and expanding the boundaries of our minds and capabilities we’ll define and redefine excellence in recruiting leadership.
Key takeaways include:
Balancing the needs presented by today’s business environment while simultaneously building a future focused strategy;
Delivering enhanced value through the recruitment function;
Leveraging your employment brand to attract and retain top talent; and,
When:July 8th from 2:30 to 6:00 with networking reception to follow. Snacks and refreshments provided by Avature.
Where:Hosted at theIntel Campus (exact details shared with confirmed registration)
Who Should Attend: The workshop is designed for recruiting function leaders, senior recruiters and talent strategists working within a corporate environment.
RSVP: To register for the event contact Susan Burns directly via email or phone 503.381.9292.
Note:The workshop is designed to be a small event to maximize learning and is limited to 50 people. Initially we will confirm only two people per company but if space is available will add accordingly.
The ability for companies to move quickly is more important than ever before.Change is constant. Uncertainty is a reality.Complexity is on the increase, and the need for agility is rising as a core organizational competency.We’re living in a new business environment being shaped by shifting talent patterns, increased competition, shorter business maturity cycles and lower barriers to entry, just to name a few.These are the elements shaping today’s and tomorrow’s business ecosystem and your organizational talent capability.Your organization’s ability to shape an adaptive talent strategy and proactively develop response capability will allow you to harness these influencers and gain the upper-hand.
An adaptive talent strategy provides you with an architecture to meet the evolving needs of business and develop a value-oriented talent function. Complex? Actually, it’s simpler and more streamlined than what you may have today. Expensive? Developing an adaptive talent strategy is more cost-effective than not developing one. Will it mean we’ll have to change how we do things? Oh, yes! But, what doesn’t require change? The cost of “standing still” or not adapting may be less expensive in the short-run but over the long-term the cost of not adapting will cost you considerably more, and quite possible even the survival of your talent function or organization.And, more often than not, change is good.The hardest thing about dealing with change is getting over the initial shock that you need to change.Once your open to new ideas and new ways of thinking an entirely new set of possibilities emerges.
Adaptive talent strategies are based on alignment and clarity around the organization’s strategic business directives.They succeed when there is active dialogue between the business units, finance and talent acquisition leaders during the strategic business planning process.In too many instances, recruiting becomes a just-behind process. If the talent acquisition leader is not part of the business planning discussion then the organization is already at a disadvantage and successful implementation of the business strategy is compromised. Now, granted, its up to the talent acquisition leader to ask the right questions and then develop an effective plan to ensure support and success.The key here is involving talent acquisition early enough in the conversation to shift from reactive tactics to value-oriented strategy development and implementation.When the talent acquisition leader has sufficient information early enough in the planning process they’re able to effectively allocate resources, structure their team, make investment decisions, and guide the company’s strategic directives by providing critical insight into the availability of talent.This conversation becomes the pivotal point in developing an adaptive talent strategy. From here, the company can benefit from increased clarity.
Three other key components that shape developing an adaptive talent strategy -
Know the talent you have Visibility into the company’s existing workforce should be easily accessible for the recruiting function.Knowing where the strengths, weaknesses and gaps exist informs external recruitment. When the talent acquisition leader has this information they can more effectively develop a recruitment strategy and direct resources by partnering with their organizational development peer to identify the key skills and competencies needed to support the organization. An internal talent management system can deliver a number of benefits.It brings efficiency to the talent planning process and facilitates the movement of talent throughout the organization to meet the needs of employees and businesses.If employees know they have opportunities to pursue elsewhere in the organization chances are your going to improve retention. External recruitment should always be informed by the internal gaps and talent plans to make smarter investments and decisions when pursuing new talent.
Develop a talent plan Clarity around workforce structure guides how the organization shapes thinking about talent today and in the future?Which roles need to sit in a specific geographic location and where do you have flexibility to pursue the best talent regardless of location? Where can you infuse elasticity in your workforce through part-time, contingent and job share roles? When do you build and when do you “buy” talent? How do you broaden reach by identifying where work can be done outside the organization and engage collective collaboration to generate ideas and drive innovation?What is your plan for knowledge transfer? How will you prepare for a maturing workforce with different needs? What does the supply and demand look like for the talent you need to support the strategic business directives? For which functional areas and roles do you have a recruiting core competency and where will you outsource recruitment to a third-party? These are just a few of the key questions that should be asked in developing a talent plan to guide recruitment.Without having clarity around these types of questions and the resulting impact on your organization, chances are you’ll experience significant talent pain points over time rather than operating as an adaptive, value-oriented talent function.
Leverage technology In addition to an internal talent management system, a CRM tools is a key component to building an effective suite of recruiting technology solutions.The CRM serves a number of critical needs.It supports the recruitment function’s ability to manage communications, build relationships, integrate state-of-the art sourcing capability and provide visibility into the readiness of your talent pipeline.This last benefit, visibility into the readiness of your talent pipeline, is key to supporting an adaptive talent strategy.You’ll be able to provide better guidance to the business partners and make smarter decisions around how and where you allocate resources to external recruitment.The Reports screenshot to the right, courtesy of Avature, provides an example of the benefits gained when you have visibility into your talent pipeline.You know the readiness of talent and the depth of your pool by type of talent needed.
This will begin to provide you with an idea of what shapes an adaptive talent strategy.The benefit to the organization is enhanced support of the strategic business directives by improving alignment, opening up an active dialogue early enough in the planning process, and anticipating the types of talent needed.The benefit to the talent function is improved clarity around strategic business directives, the ability to be more planful in developing and implementing a supporting strategy, and the ability to deliver greater value to the organization. The ROI can be significant. You’ll realize the benefits of reduced third-party recruitment fees, reduced time-to-hire, increased recruiter productivity, reduced marketing / job posting costs, and increased efficiency in the movement of internal talent. The remaining elements - employment brand and networks, metrics, and internal communication will be covered soon. You might also want to take a look at the model on the home page to get a visual image of the framework for an adaptive talent strategy.
Managing a financial portfolio takes increasing skill, risk tolerance and foresight. Whether you’re working with a financial advisor or not, active participation is required. Decisions are not easy but one thing is clear when it comes to good financial planning – diversifying your portfolio is a smart thing to do. In uncertain times it’s even more important.
One of the key takeaways from 
Last week a group of unique people from the talent space came together for the first 
What time would we begin each day? How much personal time was needed / desired? What was important to each of us in providing an environment that nurtured productive dialogue? What values do we hold around collaboration and communication? And, what would be our comfort level with connecting to the outside world via social media while we were together? This was not an easy conversation. Not because the group was reluctant to discuss it but because their hunger to dive head first into our primary discussion was evident and bursting through, so we took a meandering path. This was time well spent and provided an important foundation that would serve us well over the course of our time together.
What was remarkable was the ease with which the group came together. Every aspect of what would be necessary to be together for this period of time was met with ease. Everyone naturally assumed roles as needed to ensure our shared environment was conducive to being together and immersing ourselves in the work we had come together to explore. Our days were long and our formal conversations began at 9 or 10 am and went until 10 pm. The group’s collective energy created a respectful environment for honest, tough dialogue yet work and play seemed to fuse together as one. We organically found a balance between structure and openness that allowed us to challenge assumptions, wrestle with paradigms, tear things down, and begin again – after all this was transformational work and the path is not linear but an iterative process that unfolds through a process of discovery. People stepped up to lead discussions and everyone stayed engaged and committed to crafting a vision for the future of the talent function, that ultimately led to more questions than answers. There was an ease and a comfort that each person helped to foster through their engagement and persistent commitment to the group dynamics.
The second 
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be everywhere. Some will consciously decide to be nowhere — we have the phone and that works very well, thank you. Many are feeling overwhelmed by what’s happening, the pace of change, and the fears about transparency. In most cases you don’t need to be and shouldn’t be everywhere. And, you may decide to be nowhere, but make sure that’s a conscious decision and not just resistance to inevitable change.
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help you capture and drive the most relevant job seekers to your site and 
The ability for companies to move quickly is more important than ever before.
