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Cosmic Jobs: Now Hiring at CERN!


CERN Twitterstream

On March 30, 2010, “a new era in science” opened when the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) achieved an operational energy level of 7 TeV.

Decoded, that means scientists have succeeded in smashing together sub-atomic particles at something near the speed of light.  Why?  To find out more (and maybe everything) about the origins and inner workings of the cosmos.

There’s a long way to go before the answers are revealed—and it may well be that surprising new questions emerge before there are actually any answers.  So there’s plenty of work to be done at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), owner of the world’s largest science experiment.  The LHC is a circular tunnel that runs for seventeen miles under French and Swiss territory, packed with devices that can measure time to a few billionths of a second and register location to millionths of a metre, to record data about the particle collisions.  Around fifteen million gigabytes of data every year, to be exact.  The data will be stored and processed in a worldwide grid comprising thousands of computers.

Top scientists from many countries are participating in this huge project.  But CERN also needs all kinds of other workers, from administrative staff to equipment technicians.  In fact—they are looking for a Recruitment Specialist!

This “challenging position” would be in a “newly established unit” that will:

. . . implement best practices by forecasting and anticipating recruitment needs, planning these in collaboration with key management stakeholders, and subsequently delivering a service of excellence from attraction and assessment of candidates through to selection and appointment.

That description may sound familiar—but now just imagine recruiting for a project that may unlock the secrets of the universe.  “Challenging” just doesn’t seem a strong enough word!

In terms of the organization’s online presence:  Careers at CERN is a pleasant but rather plain site, with information on a variety of programs, the typical search tools,  and the usual sort of video.  There’s nothing about the “culture,” perhaps because applicants in such a rarified niche would either already know or not really care about the working environment.  And there are no social media links.   CERN actually has a good Twitter presence on the “science” side, but apparently that hasn’t taken hold on the HR side.   So all in all, the site is functional but not nearly so exciting/romantic as one might hope.

If you want to know more about CERN and the LHC, get some background with the 3 Minute CERN Tour at YouTube.  (It’s really excellent.)  Then catch up on recent events with this BBC story.  And CERN’s LHC website is also a great source of information.

March Wrap-up


flower

Continuing the monthly tradition, here are some follow-ups and add-ons for March posts, plus anything that was too small for a post, but too interesting to pass up.

Yet More about Social Media Recruiting!

There’s nothing radical or surprising in CareerBuilder’s new eBook—but it’s so charming that I recommend a download.  Plus it has my favorite title of the month:  Will Tweet for Work.   (The subtitle, A User’s Guide to Talent Recruitment through Social Media, is less amusing but more informative . . . )

Highlights include:  A page on “Niche Sites” like Bebo, Ning, and Slideshare, and one on “Best Practices for Using Social Media to Recruit.”  Clearly organized, and filled with tips, this eBook offers a lot of information in just 22 pages.

While thinking about social media–visit/revisit our March post on Corporate Blogging.

The Art of the Turndown

A continuing theme at Corporate Eye on Careers is improvement of the candidate experience.  The basic idea of being nice to candidates gets repeated a lot, along with reasons why it’s good business and reminders for best practice.  But obviously this topic can’t be covered too often, since so many HRs still aren’t managing their candidates effectively.

Turndowns and Great Recruiters, a post by Jason Lauritson over at the Human Capital Institute blog, offers some helpful tips for one of the hardest tasks in the hiring process:  rejecting applicants.

Further Adventures of the Undercover Employee

As explained in an earlier post,  I’ve been spending a few weeks disguised as a worker bee inside a really big company.  So how’s that working out . . . ?

Aaaarrrgh!  I’m still in the hive, so won’t go into a lot of detail—but here are a couple of thoughts that have occurred to me so far:

  • From the hiring perspective: Many job descriptions include the phrase “fast-paced environment.”  And that could mean anything from “uncontrolled chaos” to “never boring.”  Candidates should ask what flavor of “fast-paced” the environment really is—and interviewers should be prepared to answer honestly.  A real discussion on this point could help improve hiring fit, since the skills required for a fast-paced environment could be excellent multi-tasking on one hand, nerves of titanium on another.
  • From the onboarding perspective: One of the challenges for new employees is finding themselves in a lot of meetings where they don’t know the other people and don’t have any background on the topic.  That’s hard enough in person.  So as more and more meetings become virtual, meeting leaders need to seriously master the appropriate skills.  For example . . . Remember that people on the phone can’t see you!!  Remember that people on the phone probably can’t hear questions asked by people in the room.  And learn how to use the conferencing tool (whatever it is) BEFORE the meeting.

More from the Undercover Employee in future posts.  Meanwhile–Hello, April!


(Many thanks to prakhar for this month’s “something beautiful.”)

Is Twitter the New Rolodex?

 

Rolodex 1d

Recently I realized just how Twitterized I’ve become.  I saw a blog I liked (One Louder, by Microsoft “Employee Evangelist” Heather Hamilton) and felt rather desperate when I didn’t find a Twitter bird on the site.  Thinking it through, I found that Twitter (via Tweetdeck) is now the way I “file” people/websites I want to keep in view.

I still have a very nice set of categorized pages that gather RSS feeds–and almost every website/blog on earth offers RSS, so no problem there.  But in truth I don’t look at those pages very often any more.  I use them like a library, visiting when I want to browse or find something in particular.  So if I were to put One Louder on a feed page, I would probably forget all about it until I went there to look for something else.

On the other hand, when someone I follow tweets about a new post on their blog, the tweet appears in the appropriate column on my deck display, and I can tell pretty fast whether I want to look at it or not.  If I do, the post is a click away.  And that’s just one of the many ways Twitter can be useful even if you don’t ever tweet.

I didn’t invent the Twitter/Rolodex connection, of course.  In fact, a Fast Company blog post last year gave a nice example of how Twitter works as a a “living Rolodex that responds to you.”  And around the same time, another blogger gave a good example of how Twitter has become “the new rolodex for every journalist.“

If you think back to the original Rolodex, its great virtues were simplicity (each card holds the indispensable information, with no frills) and consistency (every card has the same information arranged in the same way).  Of course you could also  scribble on the back of them, but that’s a matter of taste . . .

Twitter offers some of the same attractions.  Everybody gets the same number of characters, so it’s a level playing field–and you can absolutely count on tweets being short!  Few things in life are so certain.

At the same time, following a resource on Twitter adds a dimension of information by surfacing what they notice and choose to tweet.  It’s amazing what you can figure out about an individual or company by just observing their Twitterstream for a while!  And with the advent of Twitter lists and Twitter managers, you can now organize your Twitter Rolodex in many different configurations—for example, put the boring people all on one list and filter them out.  They are still in your “file,” but you don’t have to see what they tweet.

Heather Hamilton wrote a post about why she is reluctant to engage Twitter, and I think she probably speaks for a lot of people who have the same concerns.  But the potential usefulness of Twitter doesn’t really become apparent until you actually get into it, mess around with different approaches, and  stick with it for a while.  That process lets you figure out what role—if any–it should play in your work/life.

 

(Many thanks to Hannes Grobe for the original photograph of this cultural icon.  It’s been reworked a bit here.)

A Handy Guide to Content Marketing. Plus—Employer Branding in a Nutshell

800px-Combustor_with_guide_vanes 2.svg

I hadn’t thought that much about the definition of “content marketing” until I visited the Junta42 site for another reason, and realized that I wasn’t sure exactly how they were using the term.  While scouting around for clues, I found an absolute gem buried in one of the many (many) layers and offshoots of the site.

Junta42 is a content-marketing matchmaker (projects-to-vendors), and their site is super-rich in content about content.  But there is such a thing as too much abundance!  Luckily, though, I did discover the Content Marketing Playbook and recommend it very highly.  Subtitled “42 Ways to Connect with Customers,” this nifty ebook has a page for every imaginable kind of content, from white papers to webinars.  And!  Each page has a brief case study that links right to a relevant example of the content type.  So if you’re not completely clear on what an “Online Media Site” might be (Item 31), you can click right over to an example at Proctor & Gamble’s HomeMadeSimple.com.

For every content type there’s a handy cheat sheet, explaining what it is, who/what it’s good for, who/what it’s not good for–and ending with three quick tips.  A cruise through this book provides a great refresher on content forms that are already familiar (blogging, newsletters, podcasts, etc.) and should also offer every reader at least a few new ideas.  Get up to speed on magalogs, wikis, widgets, and more.

Suggestions:  (1) Open/download the PDF version.  You can page through the book via the website, but there’s a lot of visual distraction. (2) While visiting Junta42, bookmark their guide to the “Top 42”  blogs about content marketing.  (The list is also an example of Playbook Item 11, the “Industry Ranking System.”)

Speaking of cheat sheets—there is an exceptionally concise summary of employer branding on the website of Singapore-based Human Resources magazine.  It’s smart, short, simple, and clear.  Here’s a highlight:

Generally, companies can focus on four types of employer branding messages:

Focus on offers: “At our company, you get more than what you get elsewhere. (E.g. benefits, culture, and career opportunities)”

Focus on personality: “You can find people who are similar to you in our company.”

Focus on values: “Values are important to us. If you share the same values, you can live according to what’s important to you here.”

Focus on tasks: “At our company, you will get the chance to do what excites you and you will love it here.”

This article provides a nice refresher for those already engaged with employer branding, and a useful starting point for those new to the topic.

All in all–two free reads that offer a lot of value.

 

(Thanks to Arnero for the . . . illustration.  Wondering what it is?  Me too.  By title, a “Combustor with guide vanes.”  No idea what that means, but it’s really cool to look at!)

 

“New” Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For: Part 1

Fortune 100

The February 28th edition of CBS’s popular Sunday Morning show led with a profile of SAS, the top shop in this year’s Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For.  But the title of the story wasn’t “Workers in Paradise”—it was:  “The Great American Paycheck Squeeze.”

Fortune explains the choice for first place:

SAS boasts a laundry list of benefits — high-quality [onsite] child care at $410 a month, 90% coverage of the health insurance premium, unlimited sick days, a medical center staffed by four physicians and 10 nurse practitioners (at no cost to employees), a free 66,000-square-foot fitness center and natatorium, a lending library, and a summer camp for children.

There’s more about the culture (based on “trust between our employees and the company”), the continuity of leadership, the profitability of the company, and so on.  But the big deal is obviously the Edenic workplace, which also boasts 40 miles of running trails, a hair salon, three subsidized cafeterias, an onsite massage therapist (of course), and an artist-in-residence program.

So what could possibly be wrong with this picture?

As the Sunday Morning story observes:  “The reality is, for more and more Americans in these recessionary times, SAS might as well be Disney World.”

There’s an inherent discontinuity in the list between what we might call the “campus” companies, where life is made easy for employees (Intel, Intuit, Genentech, Qualcomm, the list goes on) and the “shirt sleeve” companies, where employees are offered emotional reward in lieu of creature comforts.  Stew Leonard’s, Build-a-Bear Workshop, Umpqua Bank and a few others compete mainly on charm—fun at work, family feeling, respect for and from management—plus health care benefits, with few other tangible perks.

There’s also a discontinuity between companies where many people might work and those where few need apply.  SAS actually did grow jobs last year, by a modest 2%.  But the people they hire are for the most part already selected out of the general population by high skill levels.  And many of the more applicant-accessible companies on the list had negative job growth, ranging from -2% to more than -20%.  Across the board, from FedEx to Zappos, CarMax to Men’s Wearhouse, the job news for non-geniuses was not good.

So who grew?  Biggest increases were at the Scooter Store (up 51%) and Smucker’s (up 44%).  The “why” at Scooter Store seems obvious, given the aging population and the general decline in fitness.  As for Smucker’s . . . well, sales have increased 58% since their acquisition of Folger’s in 2008, so effectively they bought a bunch of new jobs.  And coffee has turned out to be a great space for expansion, since decreases in disposable income have driven coffee drinkers to brew at home.  On the flip side, job growth at Starbucks was -27%.

More analysis, and some lessons from the list, in Part 2.

Undercover Employee


Shhhh 1

I haven’t seen the new television show Undercover Boss—but the idea seems almost irresistible.  Who wouldn’t want to see executives slogging around in the trenches?

However, I have done several stints as an undercover employee.  Way back when I wanted to get out of academia and learn about the business world, I found it was easy to get temp jobs because I could type really (really) fast.  So I got to snoop around a dozen or so companies, seeing how they were organized, how people behaved, and so on.  The companies were in different industries, and the work cultures were superficially different.  But what I learned in my adventure was that they all had the same problems.

Fast forward to today.  I’m currently undercover again, this time because I wanted an inside view of a very famous employer brand.  The “undercoverness” is not that no one knows my real identity–it’s that no one has the least interest in who I am.  My role is to get X amount of stuff done in Y amount of time, and enter my hours into the appropriate project slots.  As long as I do that, no one will pay any attention to me.  I am a worker bee.

But I do get to see (or at least hear) how things run in one group.  I won’t reveal my “findings” until I’ve finished the project and departed the company.  For now, I just want to share this observation . . .

Probably nothing would be more help in improving the employer brand than finding out what new  employees actually experience as they go through the hiring process, go through the onboarding process, try to do some work, and try to find their place in the group structure.  How many companies substantively interview new hires and actively utilize feedback?

Come to that:  How many companies provide ongoing support and resources for new hires?  How many managers have the time, skills, or inclination to effectively integrate new employees?  And how many Careers sites talk about the hiring and onboarding processes, or include interviews with newly hired workers as well as career employees?

Last question.  How many corporate recruiters actually know what becomes of candidates after they get hired?

When you think about it—every new employee is “undercover.”  Secretly observing, forming opinions, drawing conclusions.  And those early observations will shape the relationship between employee and employer for a long time.

Check out the  fantastic (seriously) New Hires site at Stanford University for some ideas.  Especially impressive:  a series of Manager Checklists that cover the first days, weeks, and months on the job.


(Thanks to Eric E. Castro for the original “Shhh!” photograph.  It’s been reworked a bit here.)