I had an opportunity to sit down with Peter Clayton while we were attending the ERE Expo this past March.  We talked about a variety of trends and events influencing the talent landscape, including:

• business cycles and their impact on talent management
• talent leaders and the C-suite
• internal talent management
• community and social media
• generations
• developing an integrated brand strategy
• talent planning
• mind shifts and transformation
• caring for talent

Just a few of the things I’m passionate about!  Visit Peter’s site to listen to our discussion. You’ll also find interviews with leaders from a variety of disciplines across the talent industry.

Curios about Peter’s title for our interview?  Here’s a glimpse into what we were up to at the Future of Talent Booth as covered by HRMarketer.

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The idea of a community manager isn’t unique to the recruiting function. The term is borrowed from the consumer world and emerged with the influence social media is exerting on brand engagement and reputation. While the role is still relatively new, companies have begun to realize the potential to attract, engage, nurture, retain and expand their customer / client base beyond traditional marketing and PR. Its about creating brand value through experiential engagement and listening rather than talking to nurture conversations and relationships. In a connected, multi-channel world, staying relevant requires new thinking and developing the skill to engage people in conversations is one way to accomplish differentiation.

The same is true in recruitment. The role of a community manager is not only important but one any company interested in developing an adaptive recruitment strategy should consider. The community manager is at the center of success for any social recruiting strategy that aims to move beyond “socializing job openings”, which isn’t sustainable and isn’t where the value lies in social media. Requirements of the role also address a new set of skills and competencies for successful recruiting strategies. As we experience rapid advancement and expansion of the channels, applications, tools and technology available to attract and engage prospective talent, the structure and competencies of the talent function need to evolve as well. It is possible to apply social networking for recruiting and even enjoy some success without a community manager. However, if you want to develop a sustainable and integrated social media and networking component as part of the company’s talent strategy, a dedicated community manager role is what you need. There are a number of ways to approach developing and integrating this role depending on company size, budget and hiring objectives. Before we get into the specifics of structure lets look a little deeper into why the role is important and the value it presents.

The dynamics and operating environment of today’s recruiting function is significantly more complex than even two years ago. Over the past 10 or so years complexity came from a confluence of trends and events – the rise of the Internet, talent scarcity (remember 4% unemployment), and a long, prosperous economic cycle. Needless to say, we’ve seen web adoption rates increase quite steadily, economic cycles wax and wane, and the hunt for good talent continue, with scarcity still existing in many instances. Recruiting functions must now excel in multi-channel branding, be adept at utilizing a variety of technology and related applications, and, overall, do more with less – certainly in today’s environment. They must also do everything they did before to anticipate and prepare for the company’s talent needs (workforce planning); select, assess, and hire the right people; and, develop outstanding relationships with hiring managers. Technology is bringing efficiencies to the recruitment process but this is not an environment that is standing still. We saw a first-generation response to these environmental factors with the introduction of applicant tracking systems (ATS) and the rise of sourcing functions as a means to streamline and develop specialization in the recruiting function. In many cases though, ATS’ weren’t able to meet the growing needs and sourcing functions were not effectively integrated into the recruiting function, were significant in size and were then the first to be cut when the economic situation and outlook worsened. The growing wave and influence of social media calls for a second-generation response – the community manager, to take the strategy beyond sourcing and develop sustainable communities. The value derived from the community manager role is a combination of efficiency, sustainability, brand leverage and reduced hiring costs. The value of sourcer, marketer and conversationalist is combined into the community manager role to target priority talent areas and support the company’s workforce planning strategy and respective needs. 

The perspective I’d like to provide is from the view of a corporate talent function leader. I’m going to take a holistic look at the community manager role to provide companies of varying size the options they need to be successful. Its often easier to tease apart the layers of a role and harder to consolidate them for effective execution and performance.

Structure:
The community manager reports into the talent function team leader and interfaces with recruiters, HR, marketing, internal communications, and targeted business leads. Through regular updates with the talent function team leader the community manager understands the talent priorities and designs a targeted strategy to attract and engage prospective talent. Talent priorities can be broken down by skill/experience, job levels, geography, function, business unit, etc. depending on the structure and needs of the company – think of alignment with workforce planning. The community manager should not be focused across the entire organization. This could come in time, but I would recommend beginning with a narrow rather than broad approach to establish the role and realize success before expanding. At the same time, it would benefit your strategy to have a longer-term vision so you stay aligned with the objectives and move forward incrementally. The community manager is focused on building pipeline and community not on open reqs. They should have a real-time view into open roles to expedite talent to recruiters and deliver more value to the connections they’re making externally.

This could be structured as a part- or full-time role. The resources allocated will obviously affect the pace of progress but it is doable. What is not doable is combining this role with a recruiter role. Why? The inherent risk when the role is structured as part of another role is that any time an urgent recruiting need comes up the community manager’s responsibilities end up on the back burner.  You won’t build the traction and momentum, progress will come more slowly and delivering on ROI objectives will be challenged. Additionally, the cost of building community is primarily in the human factor, and the absence of “voice” will leave people questioning their own time investment to engage with your brand.

Four skills of a great Community Manager

Communicator:
Being a good communicator is as much about listening as it is about talking. The community manager should be skillful in developing and nurturing relationships across a broad spectrum.

Internal relationships: The community manager builds relationships with multiple stakeholders to position themselves and the company for success.

External relationships: Develops relationships with prospective talent through a variety of channels – creates original content (text, visual and audio), comments and responds to engage across communities.

Company acumen: The community manager is most effective when they have a visceral understanding of the company’s brand, culture and objectives – what is the company trying to achieve and what is their authentic message.

Technically Adept: This role is a combination of conversationalist, sourcer, and marketer. Technology is the thread that weaves these together.

Persistently Curious:

While there may certainly be challenges with integrating this role in today’s business environment there is potentially more risk in not moving forward.  It is equally important for the recruiting function to be on the edge of newness and invest in preparing for the future, as it is for sales, marketing or product development, and IT. It could be argued that its even more important to invest in the recruitment function to support the company’s business needs and ensure the talent they need to execute across all the other functions can be found.  Investing in the community manager role now will allow the company to build a foundation at a time when there is an opportunity to engage talent at a lower cost of attraction and ensure the company is prepared as the business environment improves.

If you’d like additional background on the role of social media and recruiting, you can reference my article, Building a Recruitment Strategy in a Social World. You might also enjoy this article from the NYT that describes how communication, ideas, community and transparency are influencing the world.

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If you’ve read my last post or follow me on Twitter then you know I’ve been on Retreat in Mexico. Before I dive back into writing about getting to the heart of talent and business I wanted to share a few pictures (you can find more on my Facebook page), some thoughts on  acclimating back to the daily flow of life – electricity, news and chaos, and today’s excerpt from one of my favorite teachers.

Yes, that’s right – electricity.  The Retreat space I was at had no electricity, except in the main kitchen.  Oddly it never felt like an inconvenience and the simplicity of it was quite refreshing.  No electricity also mean no news.  Although, there was one place we could stand on the property to pick up a cell signal and heard a few bits here and there.  But certainly not the persistent deluge of gloom and doom that has become too regular a part of our lives.  So, to go away someplace warm, with reliable daily sunshine (keep in mind its winter and I live in Portland so the sun is a rarity), and spend time doing something I love with great people was a true gift.

Each time I step onto my “mat” to practice yoga it feels like a homecoming.  There is something very grounding about it and very powerful as the mind, breath and body come together for a singular purpose – to move with intention.  I always return from a yoga retreat feeling a bit lighter (physically and mentally) and ready to take on more, but also ready to let some things go.  This Retreat and subsequent immersion back into “reality” has left me thinking more and more about how we set our intention and, when we do it successfully, what it brings us in return.  I’ll be writing more about this and how it relates to business and the unique relationship with talent, but for now let me just say that if we allow the bad news to seep in too deeply and dictate our destiny we are certain to feel the weight of the world more significantly and miss opportunities to to think differently and focus on the where we want to be in the future.  That’s not to minimize by any means the impact and significance of today’s times – many friends and colleagues from my Macy’s Inc. days are feeling the full effect of this now and I feel for them deeply.  However, we are resilient beings and thrive on survival – which translates to being future-focused and oriented to innovate, create and re-imagine what could be….and then act on it.  Our world is undergoing a tremendous transformation, which brings both excitement and uncertainty.  Having something that keeps us grounded, comforts us, reminds us what home base feels like and nurtures the body and the mind, nourishes the imagination to help us reimagine the future.

I’d like to close this post with an entry from one of my favorite books, Meditations From the Mat, by Rolf Gates.  Rolf is one of my  yoga teachers and his book offers daily reflections on the practice of yoga but also provides an opportunity for deeper reflection on the daily flow of life.  This entry was about coming home and the hero within each of us.  After all, we only know what we can truly accomplish if we allow ourselves to imagine it, believe it and act on it.

“On these sands and in the clefts of the rocks, in the depths of
the sea, in the creaking of the pines, you’ll spy secret footprints
and catch far-off voices from the homecoming celebration.
This land still longs for Odysseus.
Homer

I am struck by the pervasive desire for homecoming in this passage, an ancient, secret longing.  Here is a sadness and an emptiness so profound that it is felt by rocks and trees.  It is in the air – a sadness that is bittersweet because it is a reminder of better days, an innocence lost.  Before yoga, each of us is like the land that longs for the return of its hero.  We can feel this longing in our

muscle, in our bones, in the movements that were once fluid and natural but that have become prematurely stiff and unreliable.  There is a presence, a life force, that is conspicuous in its absence.  But over time, this sense of loss becomes just another aspect of the subtly shifting backdrop of our lives.  Yes, we were once possessed of a youthful vitality, but many of us forget we ever had such vigor and energy long before we came to our first yoga class.  And then the moment of homecoming arrives.  Unbidden, unsought – we hear the familiar footsteps on the porch.  For me it occurred ad the end of one of my first classes.  I was in a knee-down twist moments before shavasana.  I don’t remember the rest of the class, but I do remember a sudden opening and sense of suppleness in my spine that I’d never expected to experience again.  I felt well in a way that I had let go of ever wanting to feel again.

There is a wisdom within us that is more powerful than our despair.  There is a movement toward health that our intellect can merely glimpse, once in a while.  It is the same impulse that causes plants to face the sun, animals to take care of their young, people who say, “I never sweat,” to try a hot yoga class.  This life force has provided us with the priceless, miraculous opportunity of our yoga practice.  All we need to do is cultivate an open heart, to express our gratitude both on and off the mat, and to celebrate the return of the hero.”

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“Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer. Go some distance away because then the work appears smaller and more of it can be taken in at a glance and a lack of harmony and proportion is more readily seen.”
Leonardo da Vinci (1452 – 1519)

How do you replenish and nurture your mind?  Keeping a fresh and open perspective on each aspect of our life is an important part of living fully.  The contributions we’re able to make in every aspect of our lives – personally and professionally, come from our own ability to see and seek opportunities in tune with who we are and embrace the future.  During times of intense change and uncertainty – whether invited or uninvited, its especially important.  It’s easy to become fully absorbed in what’s immediately around us and to quickly lose perspective on what’s truly important, especially in business. This has become an even greater truth as the work we do increasingly demands us to be agile, adoptive, creative thinkers.  Being able to broaden our own perspective, engage others in our vision and re-imagine the possibilities and “what if” of tomorrow to enable creativity and innovation is what nurtures our own growth and our own sustainability. Imagine life in da Vinci’s time and how much more complex life is today!  Yes, its all relative, to a degree, but the future will increasingly demand more of us and more of our minds.  How we embrace this challenge will be indicative of what we accomplish as individuals and what we accomplish collectively within organizations to connect with, engage and enable talent to carve a path to the future.

Finding the time and a passion that nourishes each of us is very individual.  I’ve found that balancing physical intensity, through yoga and hiking, with the natural beauty of the places I travel to enjoy these passions has been a rewarding combination.  When we give our selves the time to slow down and absorb what is around us its amazing how the mind opens and how we can begin to see things through a new lens. While I do think its not only possible but important to do this daily, its through these times of extended “journey” that enables us to incorporate it into each day more effectively and practice active awareness. Tomorrow I head to Sayulita, Mexico, for a yoga teacher training retreat.  The yoga will be challenging, power vinyassa style, and together with the surrounding beauty of the hillside retreat on the Pacific Coast I’ll once again find the nurturing balance of physical intensity and natural beauty.  Regardless of your passion and the time that may be available to you, find opportunities to replenish and nurture your mind.  There are options around us every day if we’re open to recognizing them.

If your interested in learning more about Power Vinyassa Yoga – here’s a few people you may find of interest.  Each of them also offers retreats throughout the year.

Rolf Gates – one of my teachers and author of a fabulous book – Meditations From the Mat
Baron Baptiste – creator and founder of Baptiste Power Vinyassa Yoga
Lisa Black – master Baptiste instructor and founder Shakti Yoga Studio
D’ana Baptiste – co-founder of Baptiste Power Vinyassa Yoga and teaches other styles as well

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