By Gerry Crispin, SPHR and Mark Mehler
mmc@careerxroads.com
Since 1996 our Update has been published 10-12 times each year and aims to share commentary, observations, perspectives and data we come across during our staffing adventures. We hope you continue to enjoy it and pass it on to friends. All are invited to register for the Update for free. Coupled with our Bellwether, a provocative monthly look at trends we share with CareerXroads Colloquium members, we are always willing to challenge the accepted wisdom or poke a little fun at the staffing industry and ourselves in the process.
We invite you to keep in touch and join us during the year at the various conferences where we speak or simply attend.
We've analyzed how 309,600 openings were filled from 45 large firms and published a whitepaper detailing the findings. The point of the annual exercise (this is our 8th year) is to examine the challenges in data collection methods and source of hire definitions but the findings do resonate with so many folks that we feel it is important to share them.
Our key SOH findings described in the whitepaper's Executive Summary include:
Marc Andreessen, co-founder and chairman of Ning, the co-author of Mosaic, the founder of Netscape and an investor in several startups including Digg and Twitter (he is on the Board of Directors of Facebook and eBay) was interviewed by Charlie Rose for an hour in mid- February on PBS-TV.
The conversation was wide ranging and covered branding, technology, newspapers, traditional media and new media, venture capital, banking/credit, and more. Marc's thinking (to quote Gerry's GenY nephew, Joe Shaker, who brought the program to our attention) is "thought-provoking, especially with regards to user-generated content/social networking."
Listening to Andreesen was a walk outside the box and raised potential initiatives for HR in general and staffing in particular. We loved Marc's comment when he passionately suggested that the NY Times should immediately focus on building its online franchise while just as quickly eliminating its print edition - "At some point the guy delivering ice has got to start selling refrigerators."
We saw an immediate connection between the Charlie Rose interview with this recent article: Has McKinsey Created A Tipping Point? The article liberally excerpted from a longer (February 18) McKinsey Quarterly paper, "Six Ways to make Web 2.0 work". The critical factors corporate leaders should pay attention were:
The article's author, Jay Deragon, argues that the McKinsey piece is a tipping point because "When McKinsey speaks business leaders listen and you can bet [their paper] will stir more engagement in social media activities from businesses around the globe."
We may not agree about the extent of McKinsey's influence but we certainly agree that it pays to know what your leaders are reading and watching.
When Twitter [the company] recently filled an opening, the recruiter sent a nice and personal "thank you but you are rejected" note to each of the candidates. This best practice turned into a nightmare for them since 186 candidates received the same "personal" note.
Worse, the emails of each of the 186 rejected candidates were listed for all to see in the cc of the email (apparently, the use of bcc was overlooked by the Twitter recruiter. Ironic no?)
Even worse, using blogs and, of course, Twitter (where we learned of it) the candidates "outed" the message for the entire world to see within an hour.
When we followed the Fist of Talent Tweet to ValleyWag's article, Twitter Exposes 186 Job Applicants, we found a pretty strong indictment of the recruiter offset with a few humorous comments among the truly ignorant ones attempting to make their points.
What most interested us however (and made the journey worthwhile) was a response near the bottom of the page - another link to a blog by one of the 186 rejected candidates, Ben Koo, "My take on this whole fiasco as one of the 186..." Ben described his experience in getting the email. It was thought- provoking, balanced and confirmed the notion about the power of full transparency. The number of candidates were clearly a surprise to the folks receiving the rejection; and some had excellent credentials according to Ben.
Learning about the other candidates actually gave Ben pause and we believe he learned a great deal about what he might need to do in the future to increase his chances of getting up to bat and competing for the job.
We're not aware of any firms that offer details (minus names and email addresses) about the quality of the candidate pool and the competitive profile of the selected candidate - let alone promise to do so.
Lesson learned: make sure cc isn't an option and consider arming candidates with more than a polite no thank you i.e. "The person we just selected from among 158 of the all of the candidates who met our requirements."
This past month Jim Durbin, a third party vendor, posted a very short video recruiting tip to recruitingblogs.com - it's no more than a minute or two.
It's not the first and certainly not the last video training clip we'll see but, for our money, Jim's piece represents a future template for wannabe trainers everywhere. It has a clarity of focus, relevancy and length that is perfect. Take 100 of these on a range of equally relevant sub-sub-subjects, organize them to be navigated "just-in-time" in a low-cost subscription model with minor "customized content" and recruiting leaders would flock to incorporate them in their training budget. (Just our monetizing thought for the day.)
A Businessweek article, This Time, Old Hands Keep Their Jobs written by Joe Weber epitomizes the current penchant of journalists to so narrowly focus their anecdotal evidence that they miss the obvious.
The point of the article according to the author is that "major firms are retaining many workers over 55 even as younger workers get the ax." Joe uses Bureau of Labor stats to make his point specifically noting that "the number of people aged 55 and up with jobs" actually rose 900,000 from December 2007, through last year"- as compared with those in the 25- 54 bracket who "lost nearly 2.9 million jobs."
The author bolsters his viewpoint with support from Boeing, CVS and Deere, companies in the midst of layoffs (who were doing the right thing) while downplaying the cost of discrimination and the financial debacle that is playing out as we speak.
There is no question that making the case for keeping more productive, more experienced workers in favor of younger, less experienced workers is a consideration in the overall deliberation to avoid stereotyping any cohort: age, race, sex, etc. but the flavor of the article is so certain that we've entered some kind of new age that it only serves to remind us all that print has no more credibility than a random blog.
With admittedly no proof to support our attack other than we expect more from an article in BusinesWeek, we simply imagine Joe Weber's editor called him in, showed him the BLS stats and ordered a 500 word filler article showing a positive twist to the meltdown that favors the "old folks."
The facts are the facts, Joe. No doubt 900,000 more folks "pressing the speed limit" (55) and up are working. Perhaps they lost their retirement money and went back to work! But did you interview any of them about how it is to look for a job today? Or the work they actually found versus what they used to do? Anyone 55 and up who is in the market will be happy to tell you - and it won't be about how they've been "favored."
Yes more 25-54 year olds have been downsized. Unless performance is clearly and measurably superior, the only way to get the older high performer (or low performer) out in favor of a younger worker is to either buy them out or lay everyone off according to some rational approach. This time Joe, the employers have no money for buyouts - so the lawyers are going to require last in - first out unless you can demonstrate a performance differential.
Ahh! we feel better.
CareerXroads
The Staffing Strategy Connection
By Gerry Crispin and Mark Mehler
mmc@careerxroads.com - 732-821-6652