Corporate Eye

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Cynthia Giles

Cynthia Giles

Got Stories? Lessons from the competition

cliburn


The Van Cliburn International Piano Competition–one of the most prestigious events in all of classical music–occurs every four years, just about twenty miles from my doorstep.  Full disclosure:  I am not a pianist, though I practice occasionally just for the adventure.  Nevertheless, I have always wanted to attend the Cliburn start to finish, from the perpetual motion preliminaries, in which thirty contests play for fifty minutes each, to the suspense-filled final round when six survivors play their hearts out, and someone wins heaps of future fame.  (Yes–it’s basically a reality show with fancy music.)  But every four years, like clockwork, something interferes and I never get there.

Now the spell has been broken.  Though I haven’t made it to the concert hall, I’ve actually had a much better view of the proceedings.  Live webcasting has given me a seat onstage, with perfect views of every note played and every expression of the pianists.  If I miss a performance or just want a rerun, I can watch the archived editions.  I can tune in for rehearsals, research the players, read live-blogging by music critics, and get Twitter updates on every aspect of the competition.  What a world we live in!

So am I happy?  Not exactly.  The new problem is:  I now know too much.  Having seen all the preliminary rounds, I have a more informed view regarding the twelve semi-finalists recently chosen to continue in the competition.  Setting aside that some of my personal favorites didn’t make the cut (that’s just subjective) and acknowledging that I’m not sufficiently expert to recognize subtleties considered by the judges–I’m still pretty sure that at least two of the candidates who moved into the second round have much less chance of winning than some who were left behind.

It’s not that these particular candidates are romantic “long shots” or feisty “under-dogs.”  It’s just that they don’t have quite the level of musicianship or performance excellence that could reasonably be expected to put them in the top spot.

So why were these probably-not-winners advanced?  My theory:  They will attract media attention to the Cliburn, because they have personal stories that can be easily dramatized and neatly fitted into a headline.  Their stories also engage the live audience and energize the hall, quite apart from the particulars of their performances.

Which brings me at last to the relationship between the Cliburn and the Careers website.  Actually there are several potential lines of thought that could be applied to any kind of competition, including the competition for jobs (from the applicant side) and the competition for talent (from the recruiting side).  But I have one particular point in mind, and that’s the importance of story.  So consider:

  • Does your company website tell its employer story effectively?
  • Are there compelling employee stories included in the Careers section?
  • Do applicants have an opportunity to tell their own stories as part of the application process?
  • How does a candidate’s personal story fit into the evaluation process--and how should it?


Turbo-charged PR Management Meets Social Media ROI


vocus

In a word:  Vocus.  I recently took a one-hour tour of this magical kingdom, and left feeling that I could never again be satisfied with ordinary life.  While you’re in the Vocus world, it really seems as if you have the entire media establishment of America (and the UK) at your beck and call.  Just waiting to hear from you!

Okay, so that part is a fantasy.  But what you do have with Vocus is access to a very powerful database of media outlets and contacts, combined with an exceptional toolset (for contact management, distribution, etc.), and accessed through a user-friendly, virtually seamless interface.  It’s on-demand online, so no infrastructure or upkeep is required.

All this comes at a price, of course, but not actually an outrageous price.  And it has the potential to pay for itself.  First, the built-in reports and analytical tools could be a big help in terms of tracking and justifying the PR budget-including social media investment.  And second, the time savings, plus improved targeting, could definitely improve PR ROI.

On top of that, Vocus provides comprehensive capabilities for monitoring what’s being said about your company.  The need to see media trends and manage PR issues in nearly real time has by now become more than obvious.

But before I begin to sound like an advertisement, I should say there are other products that do each of these things, and there may be one or more that does them all–I didn’t research the whole space.  And your company may already be doing a great job of coordinating these factors in-house.  The point is not how it’s getting done, but whether it’s getting done.  And my Vocus tour was a strong reminder that every company needs to have a strategic plan for creating PR and a tactical plan for measuring the result.

If it sounds like this line of thought applies to something that happens in other departments (or on another planet), consider that a warning signal.  Treating PR and HR as separate worlds is one of the root causes for weak employer branding.  As an exercise on this point, look at two questions:

1.   “What are consumers thinking and saying about our company’s product/service?”

2.   “What are high-value candidates thinking and saying about our company as a place to work?”

Not the same!  Of course there’s some overlap, but measuring 1 doesn’t tell you anything about 2.  And if there is a problem in the area of 2, it won’t be solved by fixes applied to 1.  Et cetera.

There’s plenty of advice out there on building the employer brand.  (Browse this interesting white paper on the topic from the Human Capital Institute.)  But let’s say your company has developed a good employer brand.  How do you promote the brand effectively?  Not so much advice available on this topic.

Presenting effectively on the corporate website is a key component, needless to say.  There’s a lot more to it, though.  So I rummaged around a bit, and the best thing I found was an old article (1998!) from the always-ahead-of-the-curve Dr. John Sullivan.  Seems like it could have been written tomorrow . . .


Tweethearts? (Or not . . . )

I was just talking with a very media-savvy lady who surfaced an issue I hadn’t thought about:  Twitter vs. romance.

She reports that it’s a challenge nowadays to find someone in the dating pool who wants to have actual conversations–or even make auditory contact (i.e., pick up the phone and call).  “I’ll tweet you” is apparently the newly preferred way of getting “in touch.”

But she’s determined to find that retro someone who’ll ask for a date instead of texting an address with the endearing message “6:30?”

Recruiting is actually more like dating than like any other human ritual.  After all, you’re trying to find the very best person for an important, hopefully long-term relationship.  You’re looking for people who might be a fit, then getting to know them, then persuading them to join you (well, your company) in a union that could be mutually fabulous–or just as easily, awful for all concerned.

And although it probably could happen . . . for the most part, planning to find and woo a suitable mate by means of tweets (or texts or links or blogs or emails) seems like a shot in the dark.

So with all the hoopla over social media for recruiting, it’s important to keep in mind the multiple dimensions of communication necessary for engaging candidates.  Put another way:  What do you do with them after you find them?

Companies need a comprehensive approach that seamlessly integrates discovery, invitation, outreach, and follow-through–with the corporate website as a central nexus.  I’ll explore, and come back soon with a checklist for getting from “Hello” to “I do!”

Meanwhile, for a refreshing burst of candor about Twitter/Recruiting, check out Twitter is a Great Recruiting Tool, for Other People at social media headhunter.  And be sure to visit Social Signal for more of Rob Cottingham’s cartoons about the social media world, plus excellent articles and good advice from the bloggers there!


On the Other Hand!

hand

In two recent posts I pointed out some (let’s say) problematic aspects of the recent CareerCast report on the results of their job-ranking research.  To quote myself:  “It takes thoughtful analysis to turn raw data into useful information.”

Happily, I’ve just found a report that does apply thoughtful analysis to data–and returns some fascinating information.  It’s Arbita’s first report on something they are calling “the Recruitment Genome Project.”

Arbita describes itself as a “recruitment marketing technology, media, training and workforce development and consulting firm,” which seems like quite a plate-full.  But whatever they do the rest of the time, they have produced an informative and reasonably readable document, based on the responses of almost 500 stakeholders in corporate recruitment marketing, self-selected from a pool of 24,000 invitees.  I wish the sample had been larger, but the fact that these respondents actively replied–and completed a 48-question survey–argues that they have a high level of interest in the subject matter.

So what do we learn?  Way too much to discuss in one post.  So first a summary statement, and then a look at the findings most closely related to Corporate Eye.  The summary (my version, not theirs):  There are significant and fundamental disconnections in corporate recruiting, separating goals from means and results.  Repeating themes include:  too few metrics, not enough knowledge/training, too little investment in improvement.

Now to the most relevant bit.  “Although 68.5 percent of respondents are satisfied with their employment brand, 46.1 percent of that same group are dissatisfied with their current career web site–a recruitment tool that experts agree is nearly entirely driven by a company’s employment brand.”

The explanation for this disconnect, according to the report, is that “for most companies, the employment brand is linked directly to the corporate brand, and recruiting strategists don’t see the difference. “

Observes Kevin Wheeler (founder of The Future of Talent Institute), “It’s almost become a template for employment branding, to just add a career page to the company site.”

And I would contend–speaking as someone who looks at a LOT of those pages–that it doesn’t really matter how slick they are.  All the bells, whistles, and videos you can pile on will not compensate for the lack of a clear, consistent, effective message.

Several other question categories from the survey reveal dissatisfaction with the corporate career site.  But it’s clear that most of the companies represented in the survey have no plans for improvements.  First of all, no one intends to increase spending on any aspect of recruiting this year.  And secondly, some of the other reported gaps may be even more pressing.  In every question related to search marketing and social media (from blogs to SEO) the majority say they don’t have an effective strategy.  The least-bad area is social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn), where only 51% regard their strategy as inadequate, and the worst is “finding candidates on blogs,” where a whopping 85% report being way off the mark.

Take a look at the report, and consider how your company would answer the Arbita questions.

(Thanks to John Morgan for the colorful Hand.)


Going Native


web-strategy

Most articles, news stories and blog commentaries about social media seem to be written by someone looking through a tourist telescope, like the ones in Battery Park or on the edge of the Grand Canyon.  The general approach is “Look, people are tweeting!”  Or “Quick! Get in there and make money.”  And at the other end of the spectrum are writers who seem to be so immersed in the social media world that they speak a secret language.

But Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang is one blog that’s consistently substantive without taking itself too seriously, and leading-edge instead of merely trendy.  Although Owyang works for Forrester Research–which provides a lot of access–this is his personal blog, and it covers a wide rage of topics relating to how businesses can and should use the web.

There’s even a job board for “web strategist” positions, which have recently included openings for an “online connection pastor” and an SEO analyst for the Oprah Winfrey Network.  Just browsing these postings provides another angle for understanding the scope and reality of social media and web presence in today’s marketplace.

I’d sum up by saying Owyang’s blog is not so much “about” the social media space as it is about thinking in a social media way.  And that involves a lot more than just jumping on the Twitter-wagon.  If you’re interested in really understanding the web landscape and its inhabitants, race to read What Companies Should Know about Digital Natives.  This post–live-blogged from a conference on corporate social networking–explains some key factors about folks who are either born into the digital world (i.e., from 1980 on) or have arrived there as immigrants.

I’m an immigrant, of course, but I was an early homesteader on the digital frontier, so in many ways I feel more kinship with the natives than with my own generation.  Though my friends and colleagues are all “computer literate,” even those who work in IT are mostly still living and thinking in the age of the individual user.  Not that they don’t get their maps online, got to virtual meetings, IM like mad, and put their snapshots on Facebook!  It’s just that they don’t think of the world as one big open, creative, accessible digital space.

Non-natives worry about privacy, for example, and piracy.  They read newspapers (which I’m definitely not saying is a bad thing), buy physical media (CDs, DVDs, paper books), and don’t see the point of Twitter. They shop online but don’t have a PayPal account . . .

So in addition to the digital divide between those who do and those who don’t have computer access, there is also a divide between those who do and those who don’t “get” digital life.  Not as in Second Life and virtual reality–which is sort of a specialty interest–and not as in the early chip-centric visions of “ubiquitous computing.”  More as in Zoho instead of MS Office, Hulu instead of Tivo, and WordPress instead of Writer’s Market.

Want to recruit digital natives?  Create a digital environment.

More to come.


Surfing the Boards: And Now for the Funny


surfing-1

The humorous aspects of CareerCast’s Comprehensive Ranking of 200 Different Jobs come from (a) some charmingly improbable job descriptions, and (b) results produced when the matching engine returns “related” job listings.  My personal favorite is Philosopher, which ranks as the twelfth best job and has the following job description:

Studies questions concerning the nature of intellectual concepts, and attempts to construct rational theories concerning our understanding of the world around us.

I actually haven’t been able to think of a single person in history who had this job.  For a living, philosophers (even Socrates!) typically teach–and “Teacher” ranks 127, right after “Vending Machine Repairer.”

To be fair, the job description for Teacher plainly refers to the K-12 variety, not to college teachers, and there is no listing for Professor.  But as we all know, MANY people with degrees in philosophy are lucky if they can get a job teaching high school.

So, speaking of jobs . . . what’s available for job hunters who want to “study questions concerning the nature of intellectual concepts”?  The first three listings returned on CareerCast are, fairly enough, college teaching positions.  Followed by:  “Facilities Loss Prevention Engineer” and several positions for life guards and swim instructors.  Along with jobs in health care and restaurant management.

The job ranked number one by JobsRated–Mathematician–actually has a very realistic description:

Applies mathematical theories and formulas to teach or solve problems in a business, educational, or industrial climate.

And there are many non-teaching jobs for Mathematicians!  Really good jobs, with the Federal Government, Booz Allen Hamilton, Gaming Laboratories International, et cetera.  And according to JobsRated, a typical Mathematician salary is around $100,000 a year.

Plus–Mathematician rates very low on the “Own life at risk” factor.  So clearly, it’s a dreamy job.

Yet there is a problem.  How many of you readers could have chosen to be a Mathematician if you’d realized what a great job it is?   They might just as well have announced that the most desirable career is “NBA Point Guard” or “Concert Pianist” . . .

In reality, being a mathematician requires native abilities as well as training.  And it appears that being good with numbers is a huge asset in today’s job world, since three of the top twenty spots (Mathematician, Physicist, and Astronomer) require very high levels of math ability, while seven more (Actuary, Statistician, Software Engineer, Computer Systems Analyst, Accountant, Economist, and Computer Programmer) require very good math skills, and four others (Industrial Designer, Biologist, Economist, and Meteorologist) also have a significant math component.  That’s fourteen of twenty, or 70%.

What can you be in the top twenty if you didn’t do well in math?  A Philosopher!  Or a Sociologist.  Or a Historian.  And if you just don’t want to teach for a living–a Parole Officer.

By now it may seem as if I am merely poking fun in this second part, with no constructive purpose.  To keep that from being true, I will add what I think are two important takeaways:

1.       Job search engines often perform absurdly. Obviously, the jobs returned for Philosopher are just those happening to contain the term “philosophy,” as in “Ability to interpret YMCA Aquatic program philosophy.”  And CareerCast is certainly no worse in its matching than most job boards.  Job seekers and recruiters should demand better.

2.       The career advice industry frequently seems divorced from reality. It really doesn’t matter whether math jobs are great if you’re not a math person, and Philosopher is not a career choice, even if you are philosophical.  Here again, CareerCast is not worse than most–and they have clearly put effort into research for this list.  But it takes thoughtful analysis to turn raw data into useful information.

Final thought: The bottom jobs in the comprehensive list are all by definition high stress and high risk.  Does that make them “bad”?  Some Lumberjacks (#200) undoubtedly enjoy their jobs more than some Medical Laboratory Technicians (#16).   So JobsRated also published a list of the 10 Most Satisfying Jobs, as determined by the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center.  And it turns out that “Firefighter,” which is near the cellar (#181) on the JobsRated list, came in at a very happy number three in terms of satisfaction.

Could your corporate Careers site highlight “satisfaction factors” more effectively?


Thanks to Kevin Dooley and his Vivitar for providing a philosopher’s viewpoint on surfing.