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Communication makes the difference in the battle for talent
A recent study conducted by Aberdeen has concluded that the battle for talent has become more intense due to increased competition for and a shortage of it.
In that context I am often surprised that many organizations still don't seem to value their applicants as they should. In addition they miss out on the opportunity to pro-actively maintain passive candidates and enhance their employer branding in the process. Granted there are applicants that don't suit the requirements of a posted position at all. And sometimes they simply seem to spam every recruiter. However, in my own experience that seems to be a minority and these people shouldn't be regarded as a norm. Organizations should value every applicant and each of them deserves to be informed of the status of the application. This isn't just a matter of courtesy but may also have quite an impact on the overall perception of an organization. So what would be an appropriate treatment?
a) Acknowledgment As a first step at least an acknowledgment of receipt should be provided to applicants. Otherwise applicants might wonder whether their application actually went through to the right person or if there was a technical error and they should send it again.
b) Status update Some organizations even go as far as giving a status update in terms of a rejection as well. Often this is in combination with a note that the application is stored on file and if a more suitable position comes up the candidate will be contacted again. Even though this may not be the news applicants are keen to receive, they still prefer this update where they at least know where they stand than none at all.
c) Keeping high calibre candidates "warm" in a talent pool It's happened to me many times that I have seen resumes or interviewed candidates that I personally thought were great but I didn't have a suitable position at the moment. While that is unfortunate at that moment this situation should be leveraged for future purposes. If the candidate is kept "warm" through regular communication it will be a fast recruiting process in the future since there is already a loyal candidate at the top of the list. Some organizations create "talent pools" to which they add these high calibre candidates so they can easily communicate with them and retrieve them as necessary. In the ongoing war for talent organizations need to use every available angle to gain an edge over competition. Dealing with incoming applications in a courteous and pro-active manner is definitely making an impact. It can greatly enhance the entire recruiting experience and it is also beneficial to the overall employer branding. Eventually many candidates will have multiple options and when faced with the decision, some of these seemingly small things may actually make the difference.
Nils Frenkel
A longer version of this article was published in "Human Resources magazine".
Twitter as a selection criteria in recruiting policy.
Recently I read a message on a dutch blog stating that staff could or should be selected based on the amount of twitter followers. This article shows a great example of a gamer with 700,000 followers. When this person sent his followers a link to a game for testing, sales went sky high. Any entrepreneur or business owner would like this to happen of course if you could recruit and hire people like this, but is it also feasible?
In principle you should be able to do this. The article proofs that. Someone with this number of followers can affect the market as long as his followers follow for the content and not just 'to follow'. Unfortunately you see that a lot, but as long as they don't represent the majority of the followers.
Reality
When you really look at top talent and assume that they are all using social media, this would certainly be a good or smart qualifier for recruitment. For instance, Jeremiah Owyang of the Altimeter Group, someone with great influence over his followers in the area of Social Media and related markets. Or take Gordon Lokenberg or Jeroen Kneppers our homegrown über tweeters from Holland, which have quite some impact on their network of followers on Mobile Marketing, Google Optimization and e-Recruitment in the Dutch market. And I am sure there are others we can think of. But even Gordon and Jeremiah do not have 700,000 followers yet. Not even 1/10th of it. Which does not say that their network is not large enough.Perhaps too early
Furthermore, reality is not yet at that stage where all top talent has a twitter or social media profile, and use it the right way. With focus on "all". Selecting purely on twitter seems so reckless that it will exclude a lot of other talent that is equally good or even excellent, at this stage. Currently, such selection criteria will likely result in customizing your search for a bigger result.Advantages
The advantages of talent with many twitter followers lies in the direct impact they have. This is reflected in several areas. Thus their influence is directly reflected in additional or increased sales as evidenced in the article, but also in terms of personnel. By tweeting, or otherwise communicating through social media, about a corporate culture top candidates can become more interested in working for that company. We have not used this as selection requirement ourselves, although I would gladly like to do so.Additionally a large reach among followers can lead to more product information or ideas about the future direction of product development because of the replies received. And there are undoubtedly more advantages to think of.
Twitter as HR-policy
When the combination of such a candidate is hard to find, it is still possible to create the tweeter yourself. Nothing keeps you from stating that employees are required to use twitter. Sure you can not force them, but if you have it listed as requirement in your human resource policy and the candidate in question does not want to comply with the policy you would not recruit him. But it remains difficult, since you do not know how many followers someone will get in advance.Looking at our situation at PeopleXS good candidates with a twitter or social media presence would be preferred over the same candidates without that good presence. Simply and not only because they are people who share our vision of technology and use of new media channels within the discipline of recruitment and talent management, better yet, they already carry it out that way. However reality shows us that not everyone wants to communicate with the world. Some people attach great importance to their privacy, which I understand and respect. So I don't see it become mandatory human resource policy yet. By far not everyone within PeopleXS is using twitter for the outside world. On the other hand the whole team is connected to Yammer, our internal twitter-like tool to keep everyone on top of each others activities. Something that also works very well for us.
A smart idea
Smart idea? Yes, that's for sure though. Only time will still have to prove that top talent is taking full advantage of twitter feeds to excite the general public about products, information, business, jobs and other things. I certainly believe it is possible and I think there is already plenty of effective examples to see. However to include it as a "make or break" in the field of hr policy and sourcing I think is a bit on the early side. If your company does, it sure makes a progressive statement. The perfect combination of top talent and top tweeter with many followers is hard to find already, especially in a difficult market as is. Whenever you do find that candidate I would definitely hire!Eelco Scheltinga
HR Summit in Singapore was a success for PeopleXS
I just came back after attending the HR Summit 2010 in Singapore, it was an amazing experience! It is Asia´s biggest and most popular HR event and is attracting HR professionals from all over Asia and South Pacific. PeopleXS had an exhibition stand and I was representing PeopleXS together with Nils Frenkel, managing director in APAC. We have recently opened an office in Singapore and were at the HR Summit for the first time. I did not know what to expect, but we were warmly welcomed!
The event lasted two days and contained parallel sessions in the themes of talent management, ROI, corporate learning and a few others. In between those sessions the participants came to the exhibition hall and received information and demostrations about the different products represented.
Our visitors were very curious about PeopleXS and the solution that we can offer. They mentioned that especially customization, flexibilty and userfriendlyness all were important factors. These requirements does not differ from the Europeans.
The biggest challenge for Nils is to get the PeopleXS message out, everyone is familiar with the tems; talent management and e-recruitment but what does it actually mean? I experienced that we at a certain level use different vocabulary for reaching the same outcome. So in order to be succesful, a common communication way is very important.
Finally, this year´s keywords were performance management, succession planning and onboarding which were discussed intensive with the visitors.
I would like to thank everyone who came to our stand, it made the experience complete and gave us inspiration. We are already looking forward to seeing you again on HR Summit 2011.
Maiken
The Future of HR Applications, Part 3
Over a month ago I published part 1 and part 2 of this series. I promised that in the 3rd and last part I would come back on the impact on the market. So it is time to get you out of suspense...
What does it mean?
HR Applications have reached a stage of maturity (see part 1 and part 2). In a mature market of talent management products it is expected that organizations want to acquire market share and increase size. Here comes the old eat-or-be-eaten concept. SAP and Oracle have demonstrated that they prefer their own course and increase by doing their own development. So the expected acquisitions will have to come from the angle of medium to large talent management systems or programs and BPO's (Business Process Outsourcers). Not really a surprise in this. Ultimately it ,yet again, comes down to traditional market share and increase.
Innovations
There will continue to be companies showing up with disruptive concepts. A niche concept which can be done differently and more effectively than one initially thought. In other words more innovation. Such small niche developments turn out to be targets for the subject in the following paragraphs.
4 columns of talent management
Some predictability can possibly be found as talent management always consisted of 4 pillars, namely: recruitment, performance, learning and compensation. From the current suppliers it is possible to trace which parties are eligible for acquisitions to extend existing applications with an existing product pillar. TechRadar assumes that more companies will opt for an integrated product versus individual solutions linked together.
Acquisitions
In one breath with the previous paragraph we can mention that acquisitions will play a role. Earlier this year we have already seen that Taleo now also acquired, in addition to Vurv in 2008, the Saas vendor "Worldwide Compensation" for 14M. Taleo expands with a Saas compensation application, which they did not have. But the acquisition of Vurv by Taleo was technology they already had, namely recruitment. So the parties will not always make acquisitions for the technology. Also BPO's will be parties that will do acquisitions of technology to expand their services.
Mentioned conclusions are probably correct but less interesting than I had hoped. Apparently the future of HR applications consist of small innovations and acquisitions instead of exciting new developments and applications of Social Media in the field. Van de Haterd, a dutch market specialist, said earlier this year on his blog rectec.nl that real innovation will come from outside. So I hope for a really new development within HR in the coming year and a half and am wondering from which angle we should expect it. Keep your eyes on us as we have several ideas ourselves.
The Future of HR Applications, Part 2
In last week's part 1 on The Future of HR Applications in this series of blog posts based on TechRadar's Forrester research report I closed off by noting that HRM Applications finally have reached a stage of maturity in technical applications. Today, in part 2, I will discuus some interesting applications from the perspective of the recruitment and talent management world.
Social Recruiting still in its infancy
People increasingly come together online to network with each other. That the Netherlands has been running ahead in Socal Media adoption is no longer headline news. Networks and communities form opinions in people's thinking and contribute to decisions people take. Social Networking has re-formed the way we share and communicate. And that will have a strong influence on recruitment.Within the recruitment and talent management market Social Communities are the talent pools of 2010 form a continuous flow of new information and new candidates. Despite these developments, companies are still experimenting with the possibilities. Even though some companies have embraced a Social Media strategy they are still testing its potential. What works and what does not? And how would it operate?
Important for the recruitment profession is that social networks provide the link to active and passive candidates. And additionally we should not forget that social networks can dramatically reduce recruitment costs.
Onboarding innovative and interesting
As a direct extension of the recruitment cycle Onboarding aims to get new employees up and running as soon as possible and to get acclimatized immediately. The usual and standard paperwork for new hires is processed and completed. Company Policies are explained, teams presented and departments introduced. Ultimately, onboarding contributes to a higher level of success and greater satisfaction with the new hire and his employer. Human Resources will be successful with improved retention for the company.Onboarding has passed through the growth cycle and will develop into a mature product over time. Although I must admit that in the Dutch and European market there is still much growth to realize when it comes to implementing this process in companies. Few companies make real use of onboarding applications since the knowledge of them is still missing. Bottom line onboarding ensures faster acclimatized workers that are more productive.
Social Media, again, has an interesting role in this product or process. Personal and department profiles on Linkedin, Twitter and Facebook pages can now contribute significantly to getting to know future colleagues. Imagine what will happen when your SlideShare presentations and perhaps the personal photos of yourself or a colleague can be viewed at Linkedin and Facebook before the new hires first day at work. Meeting them IRL (in real life) would give you a head start and the feeling that you already know them and likewise in reverse.
Performance & Goal Management largest value added
The success of the company is directly linked to the success of the employees. Employees who know where they are going based on strategic goals set at company-level and broken down by department, team and personal goals will be better able to contribute to the success of the company. Goal Management and Performance Management makes this transparent and allows you to measure and report.In Europe especially the larger corporates and now also the smaller companies implement performance products and are working on it now. Some start with goals, others with performance appraisals that later deploy into career development and 360-degree feedback tools. Ultimately better knowing the competencies of the people and how they fit the goals results in better-prepared employees and lower labor costs. It is obvious that a proper implementation of such a product will contribute much to the value-add for the company.
Through good applications in the area of Performance and Goal Management companies are enabled to start measuring what they can do better year after year, and what they have achieved success with. After finding visible success stories can be copied to other locations or regions. HR will be able to claim a board member position and report directly on business value-add'.
Recruitment Systems to adulthood
The Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) have now reached a mature status and more companies are turning to such products to guide their influx of personnel and provide overview of CVs and candidates received in the database. The talent pool products help in times of a scarce market and Social Media overlap ensures talent pools are enriched with content on experience. Recruitment products ensure that top candidates can quickly be found in existing talent pools and / or communities where interested candidates have connected.In the area of Career Websites improvements have been made and grounds have been gained, even though optimization and candidate experience still require improvement. Meanwhile many organizations are working with recruitment technology. Nevertheless in the European market many projects are starting to get companies working with an ATS and Search Optimization for the first time. Those companies that already make use of ATS systems mainly look for advice on additional new functionality and how it is facilitated with the supplier.
The business purpose for an ATS is still:
- Lower cost per entry
- Shorter turnaround time of recruitment and selection
- Prevent loss of top candidates during the process
- Improve the overall quality of the process.
The increase of companies that start working with recruitment systems ensures this market continues to develop and the traditional recruitment process will change dramatically. Thanks to the rapid growth of social recruitment tools to tap into this. Applicant Tracking Systems will have three more years to grow before the 'decline' phase of the life cycle will be met. It is my expectation that social recruitment will also enable product innovation in this segment for those suppliers that can quickly integrate and adopt new web technology. This will extent the life cycle by several years after the 'decline' phase will commence.
Adoption HRM Applications
Despite the maturity of above onboarding, performance and recruitment applications it is remarkable that there is still many companies who have not made a choice how the technology should be applied or where they want to deploy it within the organization. Forrester's research of over 900 interviewed decision makers in North America and Europe confirm this picture.
Job boards fail to Web 2.0
Finally, the last notable HR product related to the recruitment and talent management market. Hence as the first product that has reached the, what Forrester calls, 'relapse' or decline stage of the product lifecycle. Although this phase will last probably 10 years, these applications must become more interactive and must integrate with and evolve to Social Media platforms.Given the simple and straight forward product offering and the high penetration within the recruitment process, these companies still have some standing time. Belangrijke verschuiving hier zal de ontwikkeling zijn naar meer expertise en niche gebieden om te specialiseren. Highly important in this segment will be the shift and development towards greater expertise and niche areas to specialize the product offering.
Conclusions
My conclusion for this second blog edition is that social recruitment will provide new innovations at all levels of the various HR applications mentioned here. That said, Social Recruitment will shoot straight through to its growth phase in the life cycle and settle permanently in Human Resource Management. This process will proceed faster (yes yes, even faster) than what we have been accustomed to for technological developments within HRM because everyone in the HR process will personally be involved and can recognize the direct impact due to the 'social' nature of social media. More so than ever before.The next and final Part 3 of this blog post series I will discuss what this will mean for the market.
Eelco Scheltinga
The Future of HR Applications, Part 1
Following the TechRadar report by Forrester Research I have made a summary about the future of Human Resource Management Applications. The expectations which must still be met but the trends are an interesting basis for discussion for companies to decide on future talent management or recruitment strategy. It is mainly interesting to look for those applications that provide the most 'value-add' to companies: 'Performance Management', 'Payroll' and 'Time and Attendance ". In the following series of blog posts I will do this from a talent management or recruitment perspective.
HRM applications range from essential tools for hiring staff, paying staff and administration of employment programs to strategic development programs. More than ever before companies see a dynamic and geographically distributed labor market creating a need for applications that improve efficiency and pro-activity in the areas of HRM support. HRM applications have been developed for years, but right now most systems have reached the stage of maturity which will lead to increased automation in the HR field. Existing systems will develop into more SaaS models (Software as a Service) and 'On The Cloud Computing' will lead to new innovations.
The following applications are briefly discussed in the full report mentioned above:
- Absence Management
- Benefits
- Compensation Management
- HR analytics
- HRMS
- Incentive Compensation Management
- Job boards
- Learning Management
- Mentoring
- Onboarding
- Organization charting
- Payroll
- Performance Management
- Recruiting
- Scheduling
- Social recruiting / networking
- Succession planning
- Time and attendance
- Virtual classrooms
The report looks at the product life cycle of each of the products and to what extent innovation or development can be expected in each of the stages: creation, survival, growth, maturity and decline.
In general it can be said that there is a clear basis in an application in which a number of key solutions and outsourced services are added. The blueprint that supports the foundation for those applications for the most critical HR processes include:
- Managing personnel expenses
- Development of efficient business processes
- Business Value-add to 'human capital'?
The future of HRM
Within the HR world, the following interesting trends are expected, where HR applications are becoming a mandatory requirement.- Adoption of SaaS (Software as a Service) is the definitive choice of large and small businesses.
- A changing labor market forces change in the way people work and where people work.
- Retention is the guiding factor for new opportunities and internal development.
- Social media will dramatically change HR processes.
- HR Outsourcing Service suppliers will become more active as technology providers.
Renewed focus on talent leads to further growth of HR apps
In shaping the future of HRM technology research by Forrester found that:- Talent Management Solutions have the greatest growth potential. Think performance, succession planning, onboarding and virtual classroom.
- In the core HR functions is the highest level of success. This relates to the mission-critical HR functions such as data administration, payroll and time & attendance.
- Recruitment technologies are regenerating. Job boards are popular but have reached the last phase of the life cycle as social networks have re-defined the market. They will have to specialize more to survive. Therefore there is still one last breath of about 10 years before they completely disappear from the Web. Applicant Tracking Systems have reached a stage of maturity but are still not in the 'decline' phase. It will still take about 3 years before the end of the product life cycle will be reached. Integrating with Social Recruiting can make a big difference here.?
Source:Tech Radar For Business Professionals: HRM Apps, Q1 2010 (Forrester Research)Recruitment Value-add
Specifically looking at recruitment and talent management products that can build the most value-add to the various business processes we see that:- Social Recruiting (and Social Networking) is still in the creation phase and has a moderate "value add" but does provide an innovative and trendy look.
- Recruitment has now grown into a mature product and has an average value-add in the critical processes.
- Onboarding has a moderate value added, but a strong growth continues.
- Performance Management & Goal Management is strongly represented in the growth phase and will realize the most value add.
Conclusion
So far we can finally conclude that HRM has become a serious player in the technology field. Many applications have grown to adulthood and for most companies it is now time for a wider roll out to other fields within HRM Applications. Personally I think that especially in the Netherlands and Europe we have much to gain in growth and many companies still need to start automating their personnel processes. In this regard, the U.S. is indeed ahead on integrating such systems into the workflow.In Part 2 of this article I will elaborate more on the individual situation of the latest HR products listed above.
Eelco Scheltinga
Recruiting with Twitter, an example
First, I have only been using twitter for about 7 months (since 16 April, 2009), and in that time I've made 1,090 tweets, followed 418 accounts, 384 have followed me, and in just over a week (when twitter lists were added) I have been added to 40 lists by other twitter accounts.
My account: http://twitter.com/aqlong
Lists I created: http://twitter.com/aqlong/lists
Lists following me: http://twitter.com/aqlong/lists/memberships
These are not super-huge numbers, but the point is that I'm a consistent user and engage in my community with on-topic tweets, most of which are helpful in some way to at least some of my followers. This creates loyalty so that your twitter followers continue to follow you instead of removing you. If you always think to yourself before you tweet something, "is this interesting or helpful to any of my followers", then you're on the right track. If you simply answer, "What are you doing right now?" all the time, you probably won't be engaging with your community very effectively.
If you look at the links above, there is a clear theme here that my account, my lists, my tweets, my followers & friends are by and large related to one technology: ColdFusion. Focusing on one or two themes is essential in my opinion.
To the success story: The other day, without much forethought, I sent a tweet from my company BlackBerry via TwitterBerry:
"I'm curious: how many of you #Coldfusion developers out there don't have a job now or know an unemployed CF dev?"
Within minutes, I had a bunch of replies from my followers. This screenshot is via the twitter implementation in Digsby:
As you can see, some people re-tweeted my question (using "RT" plus @aqlong). So, naturally I followed up with: "For unemployed #coldfusion developers: who would be willing to move to another country for the right position?". Quickly I got these responses:
I also got 3 Direct Messages (DMs) regarding those tweets, but since those are meant to be private, I will keep them that way. Next, I sent this tweet: "#ColdFusion developers willing to move to Holland, we have a Junior Web Dev position now: http://digs.by/jwK please RT" notice that I use the hash (#) directly in front of ColdFusion. When clicked on, the ColdFusion link goes to http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23Coldfusion, which some people interested in ColdFusion use to find out anything & everything interesting about ColdFusion. So, there were a few replies to my tweets that were not even previous twitter followers of me.
Within about 8 hours we had 4 high-quality candidates who applied via our website and began the recruiting process within the Peoplexs system. Interviews begin shortly. ;-)
Aaron
Stuck in your business software?
Thanks to IBM we found a great explaination why your business software should be flexible. Sit back and enjoy! Here is why you should work with PeopleXS.
Perfect Example on Recruiting through Social Media
This must be one of the best examples I have come across in recruiting on how to fill a position. This shows that Forrester understands the effect of Social Media. They are recruiting through Jeremiah's own blog with a guest post.
For those that don't know Jeremiah Owyang, he is the one leaving the verry position they are recruiting for. Jeremiah is one of the people that people turn to with questions on Social Media and has travelled around the world for Forrester to teach people and corporates about this topic. You can refer to him as a guru on this subject matter and has met probably thousands of people that know this subject. He therefore is "the one" with the network to recruit for this position.
Recruiting at the heart of your market and using Jeremiah as brand ambassador for 'his Job' is brilliant. Perfect example that Forrester understands recruitment and social media use.
Just for the example I think it would be great to follow the rest of the process and apply for the job myself, but since I don't qualify for the "non-negotiables" and I love what I am doing now, I will skip that part.
So why is this such a great example for the recruitment industry? Here are some thoughts:
- The introduction by Jeremiah himself. You cannot be more convincing than this. He knows best what the job includes!
- Recruiting on this blog puts them at the heart of their target market
- They use the online Social Media network to spread the word. Connecting through facebook allows them to draw more friends in the network to the blogpost and so to the position.
- Jeremiah continues to be a brand ambassador to Forrester, even after he's gone
- They use links to twitter & blog profiles to follow people and get their impressions to set the company and job culture
- They introduce the team with pictures and profiles that the applicant will become part of
- They define clear and non-negotionable must-haves for the job
- Clear links to twitter and Linkedin profile of the "recruiter"
- Clear links to Forrester community for more impressions
- Options to share this post with multiple social media channels so the viral marketing of this post can do its work
It would be interesting to see how fast this job is filled, how qualified the person is and if he comes out of Jeremiah's realm of influence.
Some more thoughts you can consider when posting jobs:
- Make sure you follow up correctly when people start applying for the job on your website.
- The webform and follow up responses are critical. Make sure it is branded and looks the part.
- If possible skip the webform and either parse the CV automatically or have people apply for the job with their Linkedin profile or Facebook profile.
So for all recruiters out there. Keep this list in mind when you post your next job. I will do my part in making sure you are enabled to do this easier when using PeopleXS allthough a lot of this comes down to your own creativeness.
Let me know if you have more good ideas and I will include them in this listing
Good luck!
Eelco
What has been blogged
No long story this time, but some interesting links.
Google launches a new version of its search engine soon, which you can try out here. Maybe you would like to have a look to see how your vacancies are ranked.
The crisis is still a topic. The recession is putting a lot of people out of work, but Stephanie Lloyd states firmly that we should not hire senior people for junior jobs.
Kevin Wheeler makes a point for us to go video, backed by an interesting Gartner report predicting video as the future.
More of these kind of applicants make life of a recruiter more fun, but not necessary easier. On the same note, Paul Paris, a former recruiter, is having second thoughts about Personal branding.
And finally, has your company already a custom company profile on LinkedIn?
Leo
Top 5 ideas:
-
(4 votes) Add FLAGS to report criteria
-
(19 votes) improve matching
-
(3 votes) Managers portal
-
(2 votes) Apply with Linkedin
Released ideas
2012-03:
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