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Cynthia Giles

Cynthia Giles

All Jobs are Local: Divisions, Departments, Groups, and–


You are Here 2

Every year, when Fortune publishes its list of the 100 Best Companies to Work For (2010 should be along soon, by the way), a healthy percentage of the reader comments are some version of “that may be true about Company X in general, but where I work . . . “

For the most part, people employed by large corporations identify with the local office or agency where they work, the division or department they work in, the group that they work with.  And that has several implications for the corporate Careers site.

1.  Very large companies may have many separate divisions or subsidiaries, multiple global entities, and/or  numerous entry paths (new graduate,  experienced professional, hourly worker, and so on).

Q: How can the site effectively communicate across all these possibilities?

2.  Mid-sized to large companies may have dozens of locations and/or many different departments and groups.

Q. What if there are differences in culture and policies among these various entities?

3.  Employee profiles and testimonials from selected segments of the organization may not reflect other segments accurately at all.

Q: Are there issues of misrepresentation (intentionally or otherwise)?

4.  Combining a variety of entities into one site may be confusing for visitors—but splitting them up into a lot of semi-related sites may be confusing in a different way.

Q: What’s the best approach for a specific company?

5.  Different entities within the organization may have different (even radically different) visions of the Careers site–objectives, approach, style, functionality, et cetera.

Q: How can competing needs be reconciled?

6.  Unfortunate events, management problems, and other negative circumstances may afflict just one component of the company but spread bad publicity to other components.

Q: Can the employer brand be protected from the effects of localized difficulties?

Those are just some of the issues—and there are no easy answers.  However, each question is worth serious strategic consideration

Two observations:

  • Microsites can be used to present smaller employment segments more effectively and accurately.
  • It takes attentive oversight to successfully communicate one employer brand across many employment segments.

Two good examples:

Far-flung KPMG does a nice job of integrating multiple locations and career pthats.

Global Website: http://www.kpmg.com/Global/JoinUs/

U.S. Website: http://www.kpmgcareers.com/index.shtml

Multi-functional Sodexo makes great use of microsites for diversified messaging and social media for unified messaging.

http://www.sodexousa.com/usen/careers/careers.asp

One more point worth noting:

Six of the top ten qualities that contribute to job satisfaction (according to SHRM’s 2009 Employee Job Satisfaction Survey) are more concerned with the local workplace than with the company at large:

  • opportunities to use skills and abilities
  • feeling safe in the work environment
  • relationship with immediate supervisor
  • management recognition of employee job performance
  • communication between employees and senior management
  • the work itself
  • autonomy and independence


(Merci to nicholasnova for the great graphic.)

Three Views on Employment Happiness

Dilbert

In a recent Harvard Business Review post, The Problem of Forced Fun, guest contributor Grant McCracken makes an unexpected and fascinating observation:

When we commandeer the emotional lives of our employees we waste a valuable resource. Left to their own devices, employees represent a wonderful variety of attitudes, interests and activities. They are in fact a very good opportunity for the corporation to survey what is happening “out there” in the world. When we ask them to be outward facing ambassadors for the corporation, we flatten their naturally occurring variety, making it much more difficult for them to serve as inward facing ambassadors for the world.

McCracken, a research affiliate at Convergence Culture Consortium at MIT, is the author of Chief Culture Officer—in which he makes a convincing case that corporations need someone who’s focused on understanding popular culture and anticipating trends.  In the HBR post he suggests that using employees to put a happy face on the company has unexpected consequences.

Worth considering:  Employee testimonials on the Careers site may seem more authentic if they reflect diverse attitudes and orientations.

Careening to an entirely different viewpoint, we can look at the Scott Adams theory of job satisfaction, as expounded on Dilbert.com:

My theory is that your degree of job satisfaction is largely a function of who you blame for the necessarily unpleasant job you have. If you blame yourself, that’s when cognitive dissonance sets in and your brain redefines your situation as “satisfied.” To do otherwise would mean you deliberately keep yourself in a bad situation for no good reason, assuming you believe you have options. Your brain likes to rationalize your actions to seem consistent with the person you believe you are.

The post goes on to expound a circuitous method for improving employee satisfaction by convincing workers there are better jobs elsewhere.  Worth a read—and don’t skip the comments, which include some surprisingly long, serious responses.

Finally, a few facts about happy/unhappy job-holders.  According to the most recent Conference Board report on job satisfaction in the United States, only 45% of those surveyed were satisfied with their jobs . . .

“While one in 10 Americans is now unemployed, their working compatriots of all ages and incomes continue to grow increasingly unhappy,” says Lynn Franco, director of the Consumer Research Center of The Conference Board. “Through both economic boom and bust during the past two decades, our job satisfaction numbers have shown a consistent downward trend.”

Job satisfaction is also at an all-time low in the United Kingdom, according to a recent report from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) report.

None of which is surprising, in light of findings from the 2009 Employee Job Satisfaction Survey conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM).  The top five determiners of employee satisfaction:

  • job security
  • benefits
  • compensation
  • opportunities to use skills and abilities
  • feeling safe in the work environment

All those factors are in increasingly short supply, so there may not be much room for employers to improve the situation at that level.  However—the next five determiners offer a lot more room for positive action:

  • relationship with immediate supervisor
  • management recognition of employee job performance
  • communication between employees and senior management
  • the work itself
  • autonomy and independence

So . . . maybe Careers sites should focus more on communicating positive messages about the second set of desirables?

Hello JobDeck! Plus–Twitter Productivity

 

NYT JobDeck

I recently received this tweet from Skellie, one of my favorite idea sources:

Productivity in 11 words: One thing at a time. Most important thing first. Start now.

So–I promptly threw out my entire library of David Allen and Stephen Covey books, closed my Nozbe account, and trashed my Pomodoro.

Not really.  But I do recognize that if I followed the 11-word formula faithfully, I would resolve a lot of productivity problems.  And happily, this thought fit right in with a post I’d been planning on how to avoid the social media time trap.  Then I got a tweet about JobDeck, and everything fell into place!

TweetDeck is just one of the several good tools available for managing Twitter, but it’s the one I know best.  And it’s also the one that recently rolled out a special version for job-seekers.  JobDeck is essentially TweetDeck enhanced with built-in job search functionality, a special column for recruiting news, and a desklike appearance.  The New York Times Technology section offers a nice summary of the product.

In terms of productivity—having a dashboard like TweetDeck, where you can filter and organize many Twitter streams (as well as input from Facebook and LinkedIn), is a huge help if you really want to be involved in social media.  But TweetDeck can also increase the seduction factor by making you aware of just how much is going on in the Twitterverse every minute.  So you might want to browse Tim Ferriss’s article How to Use Twitter Without Twitter Owning You—5 Tips.  One tip (“Set alerts or blocks on Twitter usage”) discusses productivity aids like RescueTime.  I’m about to test-drive RescueTime and will review if it’s interesting.

I’m also trying out Mr.Tweet.  Basically, Mr.Tweet looks at your own followers/followees and recommends other Twitterers you might want to consider.  So far, Mr.Tweet has made some interesting suggestions—and the excellent interface shows how each one was derived, as well as providing individual profiles that include Twitter statistics and sample tweets.  It’s free, and worth a look, especially if you have a focused Twitter agenda and would like to quickly find high-value tweeters.

A final thought about Twitter and productivity.  I was a late adopter of Twitter, and I’m still figuring out how best to use it.  One key (for me anyway) has been finding people whose tweets alert me to things I want to know about.  Getting the most out of Twitter requires practice, but you can learn to scan various streams quickly and pick out just what’s relevant or intriguing, while letting the rest go by.

That’s from the perspective of using Twitter as an information source.  Using Twitter as a search tool has a whole different set of considerations, and there is not a better overview than Boolean Blackbelt’s How to Search Twitter for  Sourcing and Recruiting.

An Employer Resume?

 

Resume 1

The other day I heard a story on my local public radio station about the virtues of having a two minute verbal resume.  It’s an interesting idea—especially because it derives from a very realistic observation:  Very often, the interviewer has not read the candidate’s resume, or at least doesn’t remember much about it.  Therefore, the recruiter will often invite the candidate to “tell me about yourself.”

Performance consultant Scott Peek recommends a formula for responding, which I’m summarizing this way:

  1. Restate your name (just in case).
  2. Spend 45 seconds recapping your relevant experience.
  3. Spend 45 seconds highlighting how your experience and abilities fit the company or position.
  4. Use the last 15 seconds to ask a question that will open a conversation with the interviewer.

Seems like a pretty good technique, speaking as one who has floundered through more than one interview.  In a way, the verbal res is sort of an elevator speech for “Brand Me,” but it also has a nice tennis rhythm that delivers the ball back across the net.

What really struck me in thinking about resumes, however, is that candidates have them, but companies don’t.  I suppose this practice reflects the presumed relationship between employer (superior) and employee (inferior) –but that view seems a bit antiquated in the days of “talent acquisition.” So I am going to float the idea of an employer resume.

After all, why not?  The whole idea of the Careers site and the employer brand is to convey a value proposition.  Condensing that proposition into a resume format might be a stellar strategy.

I think job-seekers would be very interested in a link or tab on the website labeled “Our Resume” or “Our CV.”  The page could look just like a typical candidate resume, listing the company’s accomplishments, experience, objectives and vital statistics.  The information would be presented from the viewpoint of what job-seekers want to know about prospective employers—which means including achievements in promoting employee satisfaction, diversity, career development, and so on.  Then visitors could download a PDF copy.

The Employer Resume could also be put in recruitment packages, handed out at job fairs, emailed to prospects, and made available via the corporate weblog, Facebook page, et cetera.  In short:  An all-purpose PR piece that not only summarizes the employer brand but also signals a distinctive approach to candidate relationship management.

I haven’t seen any examples of corporations using this device, and a fairly thorough search came up with nothing. (There are some examples of “company resumes” used by small companies for business-to-business sales, but nothing oriented toward recruiting.) Perhaps there’s a perception that big companies are already well known to the public, or that their story is just too huge to be captured in a summary format.  But most companies are not well-known as employers, and all stories can be presented effectively at a very high level—it just requires a little creative effort.

Love to hear comments!

Starbucks: Full Court Press!

 

Starbucks NYT

Okay—pun intended.  But blame the New York Times for introducing basketball in its recent story titled Now at Starbucks: A Rebound.  In its Q1 earnings report, SBUX showed a net income of $241.5 million (up from $64.3 million in the year-ago quarter), revenue up 4%, and same-store sales up 4%.  After several quarters of steady declines, the new view must look just like heaven.

So what has Starbucks done right?  First let’s consider how this connects with the subject of Careers.

Back in May of 2008, when Starbucks was still assumed to be bullet-proof, HR guru Kevin Wheeler wrote an article about employer branding titled Why Google or Starbucks? In it he wonders what makes people especially eager to work at certain companies, and decides:  “More people are attracted to causes than things.”

We could argue whether this is still true in times (like now) of high unemployment.  But let’s say for the moment that Wheeler’s proposition is at least basically true.  He sees Google’s “cause” as free information, and asserts that:

Starbucks’ cause is community. It’s a place, like in the old television show Cheers, where everybody knows your name. It feels good to go into your local Starbucks every morning, be greeted by a smiling barista who knows your name and your favorite drink, and to meet some friends.

That is indeed the role Starbucks plays in my life, and in spite of corporate ups and downs, my local baristas are always warmly waiting when I walk in the door—and I regard every Starbucks location as a remote office plus home-away-from-home.  But even when Wheeler was writing, SBUX was in trouble.  That same year saw the beginning of extensive store closings and layoffs, along with a barrage of downside publicity.

To the extent that their reinvention campaign is succeeding, it’s not only because of streamlining or process improvements. There has also been a focus on reenergizing employees—and Starbucks has joined the new culture of customer engagement: lots of social networking, a listening campaign, special offers, and even an affiliation with MSNBC’s feisty AM talk show, Morning Joe.

The Starbucks Career Center website now reads like an excerpt from Wheeler’s article.  The headline:  “It’s a lot like working with friends.” And the pitch:

We call each other “partners”. We respect our customers and each other. We’re dedicated to serving ethically sourced coffee, caring for the environment and giving back to the communities where we do business. And we’re still small enough to remember your name when you walk in the door.

Reinforcing the message is a festoon of employer awards, from the trusty Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For to Forbes 100 Best Corporate Citizens and Best Places to Work for LGBT Equality.  So the “cause factor” is definitely full court press.

Not that everything is perking perfectly in the inner world of Starbucks.  There are employee complaints—and because Starbucks is big, and actively represents itself as a responsible employer, those complaints get coverage.  But the percentage of unhappy workers seems proportional, and there is definitely no lack of barista wannabes.

Now for the punch line. If you compare Keven Wheeler’s prescription for establishing a strong employer brand with NYT’s account of what’s behind the Starbucks rebound . . . there is a very strong similarity.  Wheeler’s five steps to “Make Your Company Memorable”:

  1. Gain perspective and know yourself.
  2. Define the promise.
  3. Develop a strategy.
  4. Create a “buzz” to communicate your brand.
  5. Measure your progress.

In short—what works for getting and keeping employees works for getting and keeping customers.  And vice versa.

By the Numbers: The Psychology of Unemployment


Number Swirl

It seems like every day begins with some news report on jobs and employment.  It all runs together after a while, but the statistics fall into two categories:  Jobs lost/created, and People finding/not finding jobs.  There’s a big difference in the two perspectives.

Plus, each category has several different flavors.  Here’s a super-speedy example of the kind of real-life information that’s aggregated into statistical statements:

Acme is making fewer widgets, so it needs fewer widget-makers, so those jobs are lost—but only until or unless Acme needs more widgets.  Acme’s competitor A-Plus decides to make only automatic widgets from now on, so manual widget-maker jobs are gone forever there.  However Acme decides to make special Fourth of July widgets this year, so there are some temporary manual widget-making jobs for the employees laid off by A-Plus.  But there are many widget-maker wannabes in the unemployment line who will be happy to work for less than the experienced Acme personnel.  Meanwhile, A-Plus needs robotics-nerds, pronto, and there aren’t enough to go around, so headhunters are burning up their cell phones . . .

And if you are a laid-off English teacher or a downsized stock broker, the whole widget thing is fantastically irrelevant anyway.  Aggregate numbers are next to meaningless for real job-hunters–but they contribute to the serious psychological effects of being unemployed.  The worse the news sounds, the more hopeless things may seem if you’re one of the statistics.

In the run-up to Christmas 2009, it was easy to miss this important New York Times story on the effects of unemployment, but it’s message is summarized in the title:  Poll reveals depth and trauma of joblessness.

More than half of the poll respondents reported depression, anxiety, and insomnia along with their more practical problems such as the threat of foreclosure and the loss of health insurance.  So not only is the volume of applicants steeply increasing at many companies, more than a few of those job-seekers may be struggling not only to make ends meet but also to cope with the psychological repercussions of unemployment.

What does that mean in terms of recruiting and the corporate Careers site?  Big unemployment numbers are made up of real people who go to company sites because they really need jobs.  Which seems worth thinking about.  I can’t point to experts or examples of best practices in this area—unfortunately there don’t seem to be any.  But here are some possibilities I thought up:

  • What if companies put an encouraging message on their site, noting that while there may not be a lot of jobs right now, there are some–and they really want you to apply?
  • What if companies provided extra information on their sites about preparing for interviews, improving resumes, and making the most of your application?
  • What if companies reviewed their rejection letters and made them more friendly and supportive?  (There’s a great set of suggestions at Careerbuilder.)
  • In fact—what if more companies actually sent rejection letters?  Or even followed up on applications?  These days, a lot of people are putting a lot of hope into their applications, and most would appreciate being nicely told (sooner rather than later) that their application really was considered, even if they won’t be getting the job.
  • And here’s my most radical idea:  What if companies took some energy away from the hunt for “passive candidates” and put it into looking for well-qualified applicants that really need a job?

I’d love to hear opinions and idea!


(Thanks to Iragerich for the cunning number swirl.)