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Archives for February 2009

Going Gray

Bureau of Labor statistics

At the level of the national economy, employment news is bad across the board—but even worse for those over 55. The unemployment rate for “seniors” has doubled in the past year, from about 3% to about 6%. And although the hardest hit segment of this group is undereducated men, there is a definite effect for the entire age group. (Urban Institute Report)

Now add the fact that some retirees are returning to the job market, while many workers who might have retired soon can no longer afford to stop working–and you have the makings of a sad story.Or maybe . . . the makings of a happy ending for many companies and job-seekers. Older workers represent a treasure-trove of experience, knowledge and dedication, so having more of them available could be a boon to many companies.

For a crash course on the benefits of hiring and/or retaining older workers, check out this summary at Entrepreneur and an interesting study by Community Inclusion. In a nutshell: older workers bring value-adds of experience, knowledge, and maturity, yet often cost less in terms of total compensation that younger hires.

Once you’re convinced, consider some of the best practices suggested by the National Older Worker Career Center (NOWCC). For online recruiting, best practices come down to two key points:

  • First, avoid age-biased messaging. NOWCC gives a great example of the first point, suggesting that messages like “A great place to launch your career” can be replaced (or supplemented) with messages like “A great place to showcase your talents.”
  • Second, include all ages when depicting your employees.

To put this advice into context, let’s look at Hewlett-Packard–where the Careers site is delivering a subtly youth-oriented message:

hp

The only picture on the page is of two very young people. And the highlighted message says: “When you join HP, you’ll be given every opportunity to stretch your talents, strive for new solutions and succeed beyond what you thought was possible. And when you do, you’ll be recognized and rewarded as you grow and win along with us.”

That’s not obviously ageist language—but put it together with the picture, and there’s a definite suggestion that youngsters are the ideal candidates to “grow and win” along with HP.

Intentional? Almost certainly not! But the suggestion is there nonetheless.

Now let’s look at this image from Securian’s Careers home page:

Securian

No gray beards in this group picture, but clearly at least a couple of fifty-somethings. And the text includes a historical dimension (“Securian has spent over 125 years keeping the long-term promises we make to our customers”) plus a “people” description that focuses on mature capabilities (“who bring their ingenuity, hard work, integrity and dedication, each and every day”).

Again, the effect is subtle. But there’s definitely a different tone and orientation.

It’s tempting to say “Yes, but one is a tech company and one is an insurance company—HP wants youth and innovation, Securian wants maturity and stability.” That’s not the whole story, though. The Hewlett-Packard Careers site is serving all parts of the company, not just the gee-whiz departments. So they need to reach candidates with mature capabilities as well as recent graduates.

More to come about “Going Gray” in my next post: A Tale of Two Stanleys.

This Just In – Customer Experience Affects Brand Loyalty

lego_loyalty_cardIn a new study, Forrester reports the obvious – customer experience affects loyalty.  In case you were wondering if there was any correlation between experience and future action, you needn’t wonder anymore.  Forrester surveyed 4,500 U.S. consumers about 100 brands to come up with this finding.

However, there is more to it than the obvious.  The more interesting part of the survey is the comparison of the data to the results of a similar Forrester survey conducted in 2007.  Across all 12 industries included in the survey, the degree of correlation between experience and loyalty increased in 2008 over 2007.  The cause?  The tanking economy. [Read more…] about This Just In – Customer Experience Affects Brand Loyalty

The Facebook Folly and Customer Satisfaction

Like the country singer crooner Kenny Rogers sang, “You’ve got to know when to hold ’em, and know when to fold ’em”, knowing when something is working for your business and when it’s not is a good sign that you are sensitive to your business’ needs. You’ve got to know when you’re right…and when you’re wrong.

facebook

A concerned business knows when to admit when they’re wrong or when they’ve missed clues on an issue. A good business who’s “in-tune” with their customers knows when it’s time to revise their policies and procedures and listen to their customers. A good business knows when and how to make things right, or to at least make an effort in the right direction towards satisfying their customers. So it is with Facebook and the recent move they made that wasn’t very popular with their customers.

Essentially, the original Facebook’s Terms of Service stated that when you close an account with them that any rights that they claimed to the original content that you uploaded to their site would expire. In other words, the rights for them to use your content for their purposes would expire. This meant that once you left them, your content, articles, photos, etc. would cease to be material that they could further use on their site. Now, with the new and revised Terms of Service with Facebook, they have the right to do whatever they choose to with you old content. They could keep it, delete it, sell it, sublicense it or capitalize on it in any way that they deem appropriate. 

What has the Facebook users in such an uproar about this are the right’s that Facebook is retaining over their content and how they (Facebook) can use the content to further its own business objectives. But what about the user’s objectives? What about what the user wants? The Facebook team clearly re-wrote the Terms of Service as a standard for their own business model and not the user’s mission:

You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof.

As an avid Facebook user myself, I take pause with this issue. As an internet user and a social networker, I (along with a lot of my colleagues) use sites like Facebook to connect with others that are like-minded and share information that will help our businesses. The information that I put on my wall that I share within my network help in a myriad of ways. I can share information that I gave in one of my speaking seminars. I can post excerpts from my new ebook that I have created. I can also upload photos of my business travels of famous speakers, famous speaking venues or presentation halls. The glitch in what Facebook proposes to do with that information is where the issue is. Even after I leave Facebook (will I ever?), they will retain the rights to any and all content that I once had on my sight. Period. Is that right? Should they ethically retain those rights? Should this even be an issue for users to concern themselves with?

I personally think that whatever is placed in a public forum like Facebook, MySpace or Twitter is fair game. In other words, it’s up for grabs. After all, it is someone else’s playground and you have to play by the rules. Don’t like the rules? That’s fine too. Get your toys and go to your own playground. If you have information that you’d like to share that’s evergreen, comprehensive and of mass appeal, put it on your own site or blog and simply link to it from your Facebook site. Now I know this may be a gray area as well, but Facebook only retains the rights on their website, not on yours. Even through shared links or sites, the actual content is yours.

Right now Facebook is reconsidering their terms and how it will affect their users. Stay tuned to see what happens and how far things go with Facebook. In the meantime, I think I’ll post a link from my Facebook page to this article. I may as well capitalize on it while I can too!

Does your website deter your visitors?

Muddy BootsHow much does your website affect the decision-making of your visitors?

Yesterday I was trying to decide which of two outdoor attractions to visit with my children, to break up a long car journey, and had no information available other than that on the internet.

Naturally, I compared the websites. I know I spend much of my day online, but isn’t the internet a common first port of call these days?

The website of one was smart, appealing and well designed, with large high quality graphics and a clean layout with clear navigation. It used most of the available window, and videos loaded quickly. The design was modern, with a good use of colour, and the messages to be conveyed were clear.

The second website was much less impressive: the images were poor quality and small. The layout was long and thin, only 600px wide (vs. the 980px of the first site) and seemed cramped. The promise of an interactive tour wasn’t met, as it wouldn’t work. Navigation was confusing and there was no sitemap. The site was designed 8 years ago – and it shows.

Based on the website alone, I would have gone for the first attraction: no question. In fact, we’d already visited the first, so I decided to try the second attraction. And we had a wonderful time, emerging at the end of the day happy, wind-blown and sunburnt, and muddy beyond belief.

However, that was completely unpredictable, based on the website. I was not expecting that we would have as good a time as we did – because the website didn’t match reality.

I know the British go for understatement, and are unwilling to boast – but I wonder how many more visitors the second attraction would receive if its website were more attractive?

How attractive is your website compared to its peers? Does it have the effect you’re hoping for, or is it at risk of having the opposite effect?

Outside In

emc outdoors ad examples

So I’m on hold, waiting for a customer service representative, and since I’ve got the company’s website open in front of me, I decide to check out the Careers page. The company in question has a fairly high public profile–and since it’s in an industry where many jobs are thought of as something to do while looking for something better, there’s a fair amount of turnover. Therefore (I reason) it should be interesting to check out their recruiting strategy, as long as I’m stuck in their world for a while.

And it certainly was interesting, on many levels. In fact, I thought up seven topics for future posts in about three minutes, so this was on-hold time that really paid off. And one of the things I started wondering about was—why are people looking at a Careers site in the first place? Now that might seem like a really basic point. And everyone else may be thinking about it all the time, while I’m just way behind. Maybe not, though . . .

I was on this particular company’s site for another reason, and ended up at the Careers page through equal parts of boredom and curiosity. But other site visitors—such as potential investors, customers, or clients–might drop by Careers while trying to get a 360 view of the company. And competitors probably stop in occasionally to see what their rival is up to.

So one moral of this post is: Don’t be so focused on job-seekers that you forget about other visitors. Some of the folks who wander by for a different reason might be (or know) potentially perfect employees. Is there something on the site to catch their attention? 

The other question that came to mind was “Are there any clever, creative ideas out there for getting people to the Careers site?” Preferably the right people (but let’s not rule out the volume approach). And no, I really didn’t find any. But I did end up thinking about the use of outdoor advertising for recruitment. You can’t put a lot on a billboard—but you can definitely highlight a web address. The examples shown in this post are from EMC Outdoor, and their website points out that recruitment ads which use outdoor media get attention by being different, as well as by appearing in interesting places or being seen in the same place repeatedly.

But I think there’s a subliminal message at work also. The scale of a billboard ad seems to say “This is a really big opportunity!” So the other moral of this post is: What messages are you sending indirectly on your site? Does it bring to mind exciting opportunities? Big dreams? Secure future? Or . . . ?