NAS Talent Talk

Twitter: A Love Story - 10 Steps to Making Your Relationship with Twitter Work

2010-07-01T20:30:00Z

Twitter and I have been involved for almost a year now. In honor of our upcoming one-year anniversary, I think it is appropriate to reflect upon my relationship with what I consider to be the most misunderstood social media technology.

I will start by saying that it was not love at first sight. As stories of recruiters and job seekers connecting through Twitter flourished, I knew I needed to try this technology in order to understand it. But still I resisted. I felt like I needed a handbook just to join the conversation. Followers? Tweets? Hashtags?

On top of my lack of lingo, I started having flashbacks to high school insecurities. Would anyone want to follow me? Would I have something interesting to say? Who would I associate myself with? Add to that my fear of adding one more thing to my full plate – will I ever see my friends and family again as I now add hours to my workday navigating Twitter?

I decided I would give Twitter a try. After all, I could easily break it off if it didn’t work out. The first getting-to-know-you stage had its typical share of awkward moments (the horror when I made a typo that I couldn’t retract; no one responding to what I was sure was the wittiest 140 characters ever compiled). But I stuck with Twitter, and now I can safely say that it has transformed how I keep on top of HR industry trends.

If you’re still considering whether or not to give Twitter a try as a human resource professional, or if you have started a relationship but it’s going nowhere, below are 10 couples therapy tips for getting started and making the most out of your connections:

1) Ask yourself why you want to be on Twitter. Know your objective going in. For example, I have two simple objectives: 1) Keep up with what is going on in the HR space 2) Network with fellow professionals.

2) Open your account. Keep it simple: @FirstNameLastName. If that’s taken, try adding your middle initial. Add a friendly headshot and set up a profile that includes what you do and something that shows your personality. Great example: @HeartofHR: SPHR, GPHR, HR Generalist, Recruiter, Résumé Writer who practices Taoist Tai Chi, loves consignment shops and believes in volunteerism.

3) Start following industry experts. At first, you can just listen. Get a feel for what types of things your follows tweet about. Unfollow them if they aren’t relevant to your organization. If they are relevant, look at whom they follow to help decide who you should add to your list. A few great connections to start off with: @mashable, @FistfulofTalent, @BrandforTalent, @RecruitingBlogs, @ERE_net, @SHRM, @socialmedia2day, @punkrockHR. (Shameless self-promotion: you can also follow me @KendraPearson).

4) Start following a few companies that use Twitter for recruitment purposes. This will give you an idea of how other organizations are leveraging this platform. A few recommendations: @SodexoCareers, @VerizonCareers, @StarbucksJobs, @Hyattcareers.

5) Go ahead and follow a few celebrities and funny people. Maybe they won’t help you achieve the objective you set, but it’s okay to laugh on the way to achieving your goals. A couple of my favorites: @badbanana, @ConanOBrien.

6) Retweet. When someone tweets something out that interests you, hit Retweet (RT) to pass it along. Putting yourself out there will allow people to start following you.

7) Download a way to manage your tweets. There are many tools available: UberTwitter, HootSuite, and TweetDeck are a few. I personally love TweetDeck. You can organize the people you follow into columns and you can see at a glance if someone has tweeted something to or about you that requires a response. It will also automatically shorten any internet links you send out. You can manage your other social networking profiles from here as well. For example, this is where I monitor my LinkedIn updates.

8) Send your own tweets. If you’re reading this blog, chances are you read other industry blogs as well. When you read about something that is interesting, let your followers know about it.

9) Make some friends and show a little personality. You have your clear objectives regarding what you want to accomplish on Twitter, but, remember, Twitter is social. You are a real person, so it’s okay to let your personality shine through in some of your posts. People want to connect with you as individual. Go ahead and ask a question or respond when someone else asks one. Become engaged in the community you’ve created.

10) Make Twitter part of your routine. Tools like TweetDeck make Twitter manageable, but few of us have the luxury to devote hours to Twitter. Schedule a few times a day to go on the platform, see what’s going on, and send out/respond to messages. Personally, I try to do about 10 minutes first thing in the morning, 10 minutes around lunch, and 10 minutes at the end of the day. The value I get is that I spend 30 minute a day learning about HR trends and connecting with other professionals with similar interests.

A few months ago, I hit a milestone in my Twitter relationship: my 300^th tweet. I was very excited about this monumental occasion. However, when I proudly announced this achievement to my husband, a non-Twitter user, he was completely unimpressed.

Poor Twitter still has a bad reputation of people using it to talk about what they had for lunch. I’ve never tweeted anything about my lunch. To me, Twitter answers the question that I ask everyday: What’s happening now? I’ve built a community in which I can answer that question with content relevant to my interests and profession. This is why I love Twitter.

But of course, any love story is unique, and I’d welcome your comments on your own story. Are you in love? Did you break up and you’re wondering if you should get back together? Here’s hoping it all works out for the best.

The Positive Side of Negative Reviews

2010-05-26T19:11:00Z

During the stress of the holidays last year, I began dreaming of a real vacation. I wanted sand, sun and possibly a location where I don’t get BlackBerry service. One of the many advantages of living in North Carolina is our fabulous coastline, so my next move was to hop on Google and start searching "North Carolina Beach Resort." It wasn’t long before I found the Winds Resort Beach Club, with beautiful photos, great descriptions of amenities and a good location.

While their site was very thorough and packed with information, its purpose was, of course, to sell me on the Winds. They piqued my interest, but I wanted some validation from people who had actually stayed at the resort before committing to spend a week of my life there.

So, I hit the internet for reviews from living, breathing people to offer confirmation on the website’s claims of paradise. And, I was very pleased, as the first few pages of reviews were positive, supporting this location as a great getaway. But, then I stumbled along a not-so-happy guest or two, with complaints varying from the temperature of their room to the quality of the breakfast buffet. Underneath these comments, I found examples such as the one below, stating "Management Response from Gary Pope, Director of Marketing."

I was impressed that the Winds takes the comments and feedback of its guests very seriously. In fact, I was just as pleased with their handling of negative comments as I was with the positive reviews.

One of the most frequent concerns I hear from companies that have not embraced social media yet is their fear of individuals posting negative comments on their pages. A few things to remember:

1) You aren’t stopping the negative comments by not participating. People have the ability to make negative comments about your organization regardless of whether or not you have a presence. By adding your voice to the conversation, you are able to influence the way others view the negative comments.

2) A negative comment will not scare off jobseekers. If your Facebook page has only rosy, positive comments on it, jobseekers will think the page is not authentic. Even though it can be scary at first to have a less than positive comment on your page, jobseekers want to see that you acknowledge and address concerns. This will give them insight into how you will handle any concerns they have once they are employed.

3) Social media can validate the information on your career site. A strong career site that clearly communicates your employment brand is essential for developing jobseeker interest in your organization, but adding elements of social media to your presence will validate your claims. It is one thing for your career site to talk about valuing work/life balance, but it is much more meaningful to read a blog post from an actual employee, talking about how flexible scheduling helps her accomplish her job responsibilities and get her kids to soccer practice on time.

4) Jobseekers want the whole picture of what it is like to work for you. Choosing a place of employment is a very serious decision, and jobseekers in today’s marketplace want to hear from other employees about what to expect if they join your organization. Encouraging employee participation in activities such as blogging or posting on your company’s Facebook page allows jobseekers to get insight into your culture and determine if they would be a good fit.

5) If you do notice a few complaints about your organization or hiring process, you have the opportunity to change.By monitoring and responding to negative feedback, you are able to quickly identify and correct any problems. For example, if jobseekers are noting that they are having difficulty applying online, you will be able to quickly work with your Applicant Tracking System to resolve any bugs.

Quality jobseekers will take the time to research your organization, both by reading your career site and by searching on social media. If you focus on developing an environment that only has positive feedback, you are missing out on the opportunity to both learn from negative comments and show others how seriously you take the satisfaction of your employees.

As for our beach vacation, my husband and I are heading to the Winds. We are expecting to have a great time, but if we have any complaints, we are sure that Gary Pope and his team will be ready to make things right.

Call the employment brand police.

2010-05-17T18:59:00Z

You've finally launched an employment brand. You've got a great strategy to communicate to candidates. You are using the brand to re-recruit your employees. What could go wrong now?

Quite a bit, if you do not keep a close watch over your brand, who is using it and how they are implementing it. The more people within your organization who have a regular need to communicate with candidates and employees, the more chances there are of "rogue" messages that don't fit with your employment brand strategy.

While you don't need to call in the employment brand police just yet, there are a few steps you can take to safeguard your brand and make sure everyone is communicating with one consistent voice.

Select one individual to serve as brand manager and protector. This person will have oversight of all employment communications and will make sure everything is consistent and on target, both visually and verbally.

The brand manager will network within your company and set up a system so that everyone who communicates with candidates and employees understands the brand. You'll also want to set up a process for your team to submit their materials for review. The goal is not to supress communication, but to ensure a consistent and professional approach to the brand.

Another advantage: your brand manager stays in touch with everything that is happening within the organization and is better able to gauge the success of the brand, when things are shifting and what steps (if any) need to be taken to keep your employment brand current and evolving.

When NAS partners with a client, we also make an ongoing commitment to review the work that is being produced. If we see something off target, we're able to check in with suggestions and recommendations to get things back on track. That extra eye can sometimes be invaluable.

Whenever we develop an employment brand, NAS recommends Brand Guidelines. If you have multiple people who create and disseminate employment communications, you can use these guidelines to keep everyone on the same page and ensure a uniform approach across the board.

This formal document includes information on the brand theme, how we arrived at it, how the campaign works and what key messages we are trying to impart. In addition, the guidelines provide detailed information on fonts, colors and layout requirements, to maintain a consistent look across all communications. We'll discuss copy mandatories and tone of voice, as well. If you have a photo library of approved images, these are included.

Samples of various communications can be regularly added, to provide concrete examples of how the brand looks and is being used. No more will you see handouts or e-blasts with strange clip-art and non-approved messages, because you've provided the tools to create something better and more targeted -- and made it easy to comply.

Finally, make sure that everyone who will be communicating your employment brand, both externally and internally, understands it and can speak with the appropriate voice. This includes your HR staff (who communicate with employees), your recruiters (who communicate with candidates) and your key department managers (who may be involved in recruitment activities).

The approach we often take is Brand Ambassador Training, through either on-site presentations or webinars. We'll use this forum to talk about the brand, how it was developed and how we are representing it across all media channels. We'll show examples of the brand and outline procedures. We'll even role play on how to talk to candidates at a recruiting event.

Remember, your employment brand is not just the materials you put out -- it's also the messages that are being communicated to candidates in person or even through social outlets such as Twitter and Facebook. Everyone who speaks to candidates should know the employment brand and be able to articulate your key messages in your organization's own voice.

Ultimately, your employment brand is your greatest asset in attracting and retaining talent. With the right steps, you can stay on brand and avoid winding up in Employer Jail.

Honesty is the best employment brand policy, too.

2010-05-13T19:36:00Z

My mother recently used a spa gift certificate to treat herself to a facial. She called ahead to confirm the price and it was well within the gift certificate amount. Imagine her surprise when the receptionist checked her out and asked for another sixty dollars. Turns out that special mask the aesthetician recommended? The one that was supposed to make her face feel like a baby's bottom? It had an additional charge. Sure would have been nice to know that ahead of time.

I log online to order diapers, wipes, even baby food from a well-know online retailer every Sunday. Shipping is free on large orders and the package arrives within a few days. Imagine my surprise when my husband came home with a much cheaper case of diapers from a brick-and-mortar store last week. Please don’t advertise free shipping if your products have been marked up to cover postage. It makes me feel stupid and consider taking my business elsewhere when I find out.

I get the value of premium products and convenience. I'm even willing to pay more for them. But give it to me straight.

Candidates are customers, too. The goal shouldn’t be to fill an open position with the best candidate if it means lying by omission to close the deal. The goal should probably be to make sure they’re the right fit for the company and the position. And you’ll get that by telling the truth. So please don't assume someone is willing to work through lunch hours on a consistent basis, or report to a manager who is a rigid perfectionist. Instead, convince candidates that your company is bigger and better in ways that matter, a game changer. And some of them will want to commit more of their time and tolerance. Gladly. And some won’t. Either way, you win. Because a customer who buys from you only once, or a new hire who leaves within 90 days, is difficult to brag about.

View from the frontlines: 2010 SHRM Staffing Management Conference

2010-05-06T16:09:00Z

I recently had the privilege of attending and speaking at the 2010 SHRM Staffing Management Conference in Orlando, FL. I’m happy to report that the mood was upbeat and positive (and hopefully it was more than just the “Walt Disney World” atmosphere). Attendees packed the sessions and exhibit halls looking for new tools, tips and techniques to attract talent. Could this be a sign of the economic and employment recovery? This would be welcome news for many people on the front lines of recruiting.

Throughout the week, I had a chance to interact and network with recruiting leaders from E&J Gallo, JC Penney, American Red Cross, Hilton Hotels, GE, Bridgepoint Education, Darden Restaurant Group and Racetrac Petroleum, all with different ideas of what they hoped to gain and accomplish from the show. With over 700 staffing professionals and vendors from around the country, there was something for everyone. Sessions covered both strategic and tactical solutions - from Jason Leonard looking at recruiting as the “art of war”, to Chris Hoyt and Michael Marlatt sharing how mobile is changing the recruitment landscape.

At each conference, I try to capture at least 10 key points to integrate into my daily thoughts or reinforce my existing beliefs. Here are just a few of the key points I captured from SHRM Staffing Management 2010:

• Think mobile (develop SMS campaigns and a mobile career site)
• The talent landscape will soon shift to a candidate’s job market – are you ready?
• Network, network, network
• Develop a plan and strategy to fight the approaching “war for talent”
• Culture fit should be a significant factor in candidate selection
• Don’t be afraid to embrace social media - set goals and create a plan to ensure success
• Use video to convey your employment brand and job brand
• Implement metrics to assess the effectiveness of your strategy
• Use these metrics to determine where to focus your future recruitment efforts
• Identify how you can improve your recruiting process from the candidate’s perspective

On Tuesday, my session on Creating a Captivating Candidate Experience sparked a lot of good discussion around how to improve the recruitment process. With so many candidates looking for career opportunities, I believe this topic is more important now than ever. Candidates will remember a bad experience and will not be afraid to share that experience through social media, blogs and viral marketing. These candidates may also be customers, and companies must realize the impact this can have on their brand and the future of their recruitment efforts. The ones that grasp this will be one step ahead in capturing this talent when the economy rebounds.

(Please visit the site to view this media)

If you’re interested in this topic, connect with me and I’ll be happy to send you a complimentary copy of my white paper on Improving the Candidate Experience.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on SHRM Staffing – what did you take away and how will you improve your recruitment process?

Mobile makes it easy.

2010-04-29T17:18:00Z

60% of social networking is done via mobile device (Ground Truth). In fact, the mobile device activity on social networks is the biggest catalyst to Ericsson’s confirmation that mobile data surpassed voice in December ’09.

Why are more than 100 million people accessing Facebook through mobile device? Two reasons:

We live in a culture of immediacy and hyper-connectivity.
Social networking sites make it easy.

Major social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) have made it easy to access and engage through mobile. Because, face it: No one’s going to do it if it’s hard. Each of these sites built websites that are designed specifically for mobile access: facebook.com/mobile; mobile.twitter.com; mobile.linkedin.com.

Ericsson's reports show that “data traffic globally grew 280% during each of the last two years, and is forecast to double annually over the next five years.”

What does this mean? Social networks are not the only ones who should be concerned with mobile accessibility. You need to build a mobile version of your career site.

NiSource, a Fortune 300 provider of natural gas and electricity, built their mobile career site in 2009 and has seen increasing traffic numbers and a growing candidate pipeline ever since.

Sodexo, a leading provider of integrated food and facilities management services, announced the launch of their new mobile site earlier this month (through their Facebook page, might I add).

Both sites are easy to navigate and focuses only on what a mobile visitor really needs to know. There are no bells and whistles. No fancy flash. They simply focus on delivering a great user experience. What a nice first impression for a potential job candidate.

Haven’t seen these sites yet? Grab your phone and go to mobi.nisource.jobs and m.sodexo.jobs.

And while you're out there surfing the mobile web, go to your career site. How does it look?

“Would Euripides have been the best HR professional ever?” and other #recruitcamp reflections

2010-04-28T14:17:00Z

If it has been a while since your last high school English class, Euripides authored over 95 Greek Tragedies. He is known for reshaping the formal structure of tragedies by challenging the portrayal of women, slaves and heroes of Greek mythology. This forward-thinker had a lot of very cool thoughts to share, including: “Question everything. Learn something. Answer nothing.”

I had the privilege of attending #recruitcamp last week in Durham, NC, and I’m pretty confident that Euripides would have rocked this event.

Embracing the chaos

For those of you unfamiliar with #recruitcamp, it is the brain-child of forward-thinker and experienced human resources professional Rob Humphrey. #recruitcamp is dubbed an “unconference,” in which HR thought leaders gather to discuss trends and challenge ways of thinking. The format is unlike other conferences – people wear jeans, there is no differentiation between “vendor” or “attendee” and people speak off the cuff.

Instead of closing with a wrap-up party, this event opens with an evening party complete with Rock Band® and free drinks. That’s right, I was handed a free beer before I even got my nametag adjusted on my shirt. If during the event you weren’t “digging a session,” as Rob put it, you were free to get up and leave to find something that meets your interest. In fact, the agenda wasn’t even finalized until a couple of hours before the event.

If you’re thinking this sounds likes chaos, you are right. But, recruiting isn’t orderly. There is no “formula” or “one source” for finding your perfect candidates. The questions we’re asking are not as simple as, “Which major local newspaper do I need to advertise in?” or “Should I try CareerBuilder or Monster for this position?”

And, to make matters even more complicated, everyone has a different answer to these questions. #recruitcamp wasn’t there to provide the answers, but it served as a forum for people who realize that you can’t ignore these types of questions.

Challenging standard assumptions

The unofficial topic was social media, yet the opening speech was given by Jay Dolan, whose blog is titled “The Anti-Social Media.” Jay explained that he is not actually anti-social media, but what he does do is challenge people to think against the grain.

If someone is telling you that you’re nothing without a Facebook profile, don’t just blindly set up a page and start clicking “Like” for everything your friends like. Question if these sites are going to add value to your life or suck your time and soul. And even as you join, always question the trends and how you’re going about using these tools. You can love social media and still be skeptical about it.

Rob Humphrey followed to open our minds to what recruiting even is. My favorite quote: “Hiring is posting jobs; recruiting is art.” Is your goal to just open job reqs and then fill them? Or is your job to recruit top talent, nurture their development and change the way business is done?

Throughout the day, smaller breakout session topics included Twitter, LinkedIn, using video, personal branding and the recruiting processes of leading organizations such as IBM, Sony Ericsson and UPS. I attended sessions on “The Myth of the Silver Bullet” by Mike Hanson with Jobs2Web and “Leveraging Video” by Bill Opal of Sony Ericsson.

Mike reminded us that social media is not a one-stop shop for your recruiting needs. It’s a tool, and a good one with many uses, but you have to figure out how to make it work for your goals and then how you’re going to measure its success. Bill shared great examples of how video has worked for Sony Ericsson, but never implied that video is the only tool necessary to attract candidates. It’s all part of a larger process.

Getting a bit punk rock

The lunch keynote speaker was a highlight. Laurie Ruettimann, well-known as the Punk Rock HR blogger, explained that as we emerge out of the recession, recruiting is becoming a whole new ballgame. Yes, it’s social, but if you think it’s about the technology, then you’re missing the whole point. It’s about rethinking the nature of work.

We all talk about a lot of things: Twitter, Facebook, social networking policies, work/life policies, etc. What we should be talking about is much broader: unemployment, bankruptcies, healthcare reform, educational standards, etc. As HR professionals, we need to expand our minds to everything that impacts not only our organization, but our community, our industry, our country and our world.

I’m pretty sure that Laurie and Euripides would have been BFFs, since Laurie closed her talk with: “It’s time to question everything, including how we hire people, why we need employees, and who we ask to join our organization.”

Leaving with ideas…and questions

So what is the takeaway from all of this? First, it was a huge honor to be in the flesh with people that had previously only existed as small headshots in my TweetDeck: Jennifer McClure (@CincyRecruiter) Laurie Ruettimann (@lruettimann) and Kirk Baumann (@kbaumann), to name a few.

But the best part was that I talked to a lot of people, and no two people had the same opinion about anything. Some people use social media a lot. Some people don’t. Everyone has different ideas of how it could be useful, or not useful. But I think we all did Euripides proud: we questioned a lot of things, we learned a few things, and we walked away with no answers. The perfect dénouement.

Link Juice, and How to Get It

2010-04-20T17:02:00Z

The landscape of SEO is changing and, well, you’re probably not ready to react. Many organizations are just getting up to speed with in-page optimization strategies. Those are all the things you do on a web-page for SEO, like focusing on a specific keyword with title tags, a good description and other fun details too geeky to get into right now.

Some forward-thinking companies are exploring off-page strategies that involve building links to and from valuable web properties. And now, main-stream marketers are discovering something previously only exploited by hot-shot Internet Marketers: that Social Media Linking Strategies are an SEO gold mine.

Yes, I know, you’re tired of hearing the S-word – it’s everywhere. The S-word is ubiquitous and almost annoyingly showing up in every media source you encounter, from blogs to TV news stories. Even the line cook at Denny’s is talking about it – heck, he moonlights as a social marketer. Haven’t you heard? EVERYONE’S promoting their personal brand in social media these days.

Whether you think times are ripe for a social backlash or not, social media spaces are only becoming more and more important to any online marketing and recruitment strategy. Let me tell you why social media is the next big thing for SEO.

You see, first of all, search engines are very clique-conscious. The more popular and authoritative a site is, the more reputation it has to share. When one of those sites links to another site, it passes a bit of credibility to the new site, making the search engines say: “Hey, if Amazon links to that site it MUST be worthwhile. I’m going to give it a better search results ranking.” In SEO this is called sharing ‘link juice.’

How powerful is link juice? Let’s just say that 1 link from a site with a lot of link juice can do more for your search engine results position than 20 links from sites with no link juice.

Who’s got the juice?

Right now, social media sites have a LOT of link juice. Google, for instance, isn’t stupid. They know that a lot of people are busy sharing information on Facebook, Twitter, Digg and other social media sites. These are real people sharing information they find valuable in real time. If you’re a search engine, it’s like being able to tap into the internet’s stream of consciousness and find out what site’s people really think are the most valuable about any given topic.

Google already gives certain social media sites extra exposure and the links from these sites carry the juice to prove it. In real-time news search, you can already watch topic-related tweets and Facebook status updates emerge among blog and news story updates on Google. Just click on the ‘options’ link on your Google search results and then click the ‘Latest’ link to let Google know you want the ‘latest news results.’

How to get social link juice

Taking advantage of the new social-search phenomena isn’t as easy as just setting up a Twitter account or a Facebook page and linking to your career website or job listings. Nobody ever said anything worthwhile is easy. Your destination pages have to be optimized; your social sources need to be diverse and populated with worthwhile, interesting content; your use of keywords has to be selective but not spammy.

Really, the first steps to getting good social link juice are recommended best practices in their own right:

Develop good content on your career website.
Build branded social media presences that provide interesting information to your candidate audience. (FYI: ‘Interesting information’ doesn’t mean job listings or blatant self-promotion.)

As attendees of the NAS Social Networking Boot Camp learn in our hands-on sessions, developing an effective social presence means you become an asset to your audience by giving them information and tools that help meet their goals – not necessarily yours. This alone transforms you from a suspect source of self-serving advertising into a valuable resource. And that’s an important key to building an audience…and ultimately a stream of link juice you can direct through your branded social media properties.

The Exiting Employee

2010-04-20T16:49:00Z

In a recent article published by Forbes, “Keeping Ex-Employees Brand Loyal,” the author describes some of the Do’s and Don’ts of what companies can and should do to protect their brand image when employees leave an organization. This article really resonates with me because it speaks to why brand reputation is such a tender, yet volatile, facet of the employment value proposition. That article makes me think about how organizations manage, not only their brand, but how they handle their employees and with that, certain procedures they utilize when someone chooses to discontinue his/her employment.

For the sake of this article, I will address the topic of exit interviews. To start, why do companies conduct Exit Interviews and not use that information to the company’s benefit? If you really don’t care about what exiting employees think, why go to the trouble of asking them, “What could we have done better?” By the way, this is way too ambiguous a question and one that when posed even with the best of intentions, can make the exiting employee feel cornered. There are also questions like, “What did you like and dislike about your job?” This one makes me cringe. If ever there was a question that begged to be asked DURING the active employment lifecycle, it has to be this one. It is imperative that employees be provided opportunity to speak and to be heard while on the payroll. This means that waiting until someone has one foot out the door is tantamount to a missed opportunity. Another action that is, at the very least unprofessional, would be treating a soon-to-be former employee like she has the plague. This means avoiding her all together and placing the coins on her eyes before she has performed her last job duties. Understandably, if there is a proprietary project looming near, it is perfectly acceptable and sometimes necessary for the manager to keep it out of this person’s hands, but please don’t act uncouth about it. People will notice and I mean all people, not just the exiting employee.

So why do companies partake in this exit interview exercise? This is a question I’ve heard many thought leaders in the field of human resources challenge for years. Maybe it’s the company’s way of maintaining control or having the last say in how someone may exit the organization. I would hate to think it’s just for the sake of finalizing the paperwork, or that it’s because “this is the way we’ve always done this so why question it.” People have to mean more to an organization than just being a number that will no longer exist. I know there are companies that recognize the importance of a well-designed and meaningful exit interview. They gather the answers, sift through the fluff and isolate the nuggets of gold they can profit from knowing. I applaud them.

So I contend that a poorly delivered exit interview will undoubtedly affect the morale of the existing employee population, denigrate to the exiting employee and ultimately place a black cloud of negativity over the culture within an organization. At a higher level comes the perception about the employment value proposition and then a black mark against your employment brand. Companies that “get it” believe that the employment brand is as important as the corporate brand. Along with the corporate brand, your employment brand is the epitome of your organization’s humanity, the essence of your culture, the bench strength of your outreach to the community and supports the ambassadors you place in front of your customers every day.

Organizations need to do a better job at recognizing that an individual who is leaving their organization may still value, and may be a source of value, for that organization. When someone leaves, that individual may be leaving the organization, but she is not leaving the friendships build during her time spent with the company. Sometimes I wonder if companies think about that, or even care. I liken this to sending a canary into a mine. If it doesn’t die from the toxic gas, it’s safe for others to follow. Think about this in terms of the former employee. She leaves and spreads the word that it’s safe “out there” for others to follow. Not only that, but you know that potential pool of good candidates from your top competitor? You need to believe they too will get wind of this and continue the conversation with their peers. So do you really want that former employee to tell her friends about how much better is it now that she’s gone? Well, the obvious answer is “no,” but it does make me wonder, never-the-less.

How recruitment is evolving: my podcast from ERE 2010.

2010-04-14T19:19:00Z

At the recent ERE Conference in San Diego, I got the opportunity to be interviewed by Peter Clayton of TotalPicture Radio fame. Peter has been covering the HR and Recruiting Community for years and we had a great chat about the State of the Union as it sits now and how we see it evolving. Please have a listen.

What's wrong with this picture?

2010-04-12T18:13:00Z

When developing the visual side of an employment brand, photo choice is very important. You need images that truthfully capture your organization.

The best solution? Commission a photographer who can build a bank of professional photos that truly represent your workforce.

The next best solution? Choose your RF and stock images wisely, to make sure they avoid the mistakes listed below.

Rainbow disease

Three diverse people, just hanging out.

We’ve all seen it, and probably used it ourselves – the stagey photo that takes a literal approach to diversity. One from this column, one from that, and pose them together. It is important to show diversity, but does an image like this reflect anyone’s real workplace? A better approach is to select more natural images and to use the entire spectrum of your employment communications to tell the story, rather than trying to say it all in one image.

Model-itis

They work at the Calvin Klein Call Center.

Yes, the people who work for you are attractive and nice. But do the photos in your employment brand look more like a casting session for Gossip Girl? We all like to look at images of beautiful people, but it’s more important in an employment brand to be real. If you can’t photograph your own people, find images that are less America’s Next Top Model and more America’s Best Workplace.

Crazy face

What exactly is on that computer screen?

You have a culture of teamwork. You like to have fun, when appropriate. Everyone is striving for the same goal. That doesn’t mean you have to pick a corny image of people jumping or cheering or wildly emoting. A forced photo makes you look inauthentic, and like you’re trying too hard. Natural poses and emotions are always best.

Retro-mania

He's calling Don Johnson.

Unless your company is on Wall Street, your employees probably do not wear suits every day. Unless you’re in a time warp, your nurses probably do not wear little hats. There are a lot of old images out there, especially in the royalty free world. Don’t overlook the details, like clothing, computers and décor, that could date a photo. Make sure you are representing today, not yesterday.

Those are some of my photo pet peeves. What are yours?

Give your hiring process the Zappos treatment

2010-04-06T19:51:00Z

I heart Zappos, and it has nothing to do with shoes (okay, it has a little to do with shoes) and everything to do with customer service and company culture.

Early on, Zappos decided that customer and employee satisfaction, not slick advertisements in paid media, would be the cornerstones of its marketing strategy. I visited a new restaurant last night that would benefit from adopting the same philosophy.

When my girlfriend and I ordered a repeat of the drinks that we’d had in the lounge, the waitress shook her head. She wasn’t familiar with that menu and couldn’t make any promises. A Zappos customer service representative would have said yes, crossed the aisle to the lounge and returned with the drinks.

When we ordered several smaller items from the menu instead of traditional appetizers and entrees, the waitress served everything at once. Our small table couldn’t hold the number of plates. A Zappos customer service representative would have served more manageable courses, even if the table didn’t turn as fast as she might like.

I worked as a waitress to put myself through grad school and my husband still makes his living in the restaurant industry, so maybe I have higher standards than the typical patron. But everyone deserves WOW through service.

Will beyond-what’s-expected customer service and employee experiences guarantee business success? Not likely. But you can’t have one without the other, and both are needed to turn a smart product or desirable service into something that matters.

If your goal is to be special instead of mediocre, the first step is to figure out how to hire those folks who want to dedicate their lives to building your success. The tools and technology are out there for anyone who embraces the challenge.

Thoughts from ERE San Diego, 2010

2010-03-25T05:54:00Z

The ERE Conference in San Diego always provides a welcome gathering of friends and thought leaders from around the globe, It is an opportunity to learn from and network with some of the best, brightest and most passionate people in our field. Bloggers, vendors and progressive recruitment leaders come together to advance our field – it’s all recruiting, all the time. New technology and ideas are shared by day, while friendly conversation, business cards and past ERE stories are exchanged at multiple nightly activities around the city.

With double the attendance of the 2009 conference, this show inspired a somewhat cautious optimism. Many organizations expressed their intentions to boost their hiring efforts in 2010, knowing that now is the time to start planning and building their recruitment strategy. Companies like LinkUp, HireVue and Jobvite promoted innovative technologies, while recruitment leaders from organizations like Ernst & Young, Key Bank, Davita and Sodexho shared their tips for building an award-winning recruitment platform.

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Throughout the week, I had a chance to interact and network with companies like PETCO, Starbucks, Mayo Clinic and Jack in the Box, along with a number of lesser-known but equally strong organizations like LPL, Teva Pharmaceuticals and Comsys. Each year, I take away at least 10 key points to integrate into my daily thoughts or reinforce my existing beliefs. Here are a few key points from ERE 2010:

• Think globally, not just locally.
• Think community, not just industry.
• Step out of the short term mindset and think strategically, with a long-term approach.
• Company values must line up with candidate values.
• Consistency is key in employment branding.
• Recruit for “fit”, not just position.
• Integrate social media into your recruitment strategy.
• Focus on the candidate and how you can improve the candidate experience.
• Measure your results.
• Think ROI for the organization, not just talent acquisition.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on ERE – what did you take away and how will you make your organization better?

New Bing "Search Overload" Commercials Invade The UK

2010-03-10T19:08:00Z

This week Microsoft is rolling out new variations of their 'Search Overload' ads in the UK in a bid against Google's choke hold on the UK search market. Bing has only a 3% market share compared to Google's 90% -- making this a definite search engine David v Goliath battle. Not a position Microsoft is used to: playing the role of David, in this case.

The multimillion-pound TV ad campaign will look familiar to anyone who’s seen a few of the Bing ads shown in the US.

It's been nine months since Bing's launch and according to comScore's measurements the search engine IS gaining market share. However that is mostly at the expense of Yahoo not Google. This is good for Bing since it's growing (albeit usually in percentage points that look like 0.2% gain), but bad since it's not really hurting Google in any meaningful way.

With all the recent press around Google and privacy policies and issues, there may be (Please visit the site to view this media)some room for Bing to make further gains if they play their cards right. Maybe they should replace 'search overload' with a more direct "It's 10PM does your search engine know what you're doing?" campaign.

Anyways, here's one of the new commercials rolling out in the UK this week -- they get points for the most creative use of "Euston station" -- oh, who am I kidding, the ONLY creative use of "Euston station."

Your thoughts on the Bing/Google search battle and the now international search overload campaign are appreciated.

Dear Pentagon...

2010-03-08T18:34:00Z

I work in social media daily and educate organizations on the dos and don’ts of effective social strategy. Every organization is different and it’s my job to help them balance social transparency and their organizational goals. I love what social media has to offer in terms of community, branding, and conversation, so I was thrilled to hear the Pentagon announced the lift on the ban of social networking sites.

And then I remembered this Iraq incident from 2003.

I’m sure that the Pentagon has hired some of the brightest minds to help them tackle the social space. But as a digital strategist and a patriot, let me share some recommendations:

Do not enable geotagging of tweets. If drawing a map in the sand gets you kicked out of the country, pinpointing your exact latitude/longitude is surely frowned upon.
Don’t join Foursquare. It’s too hard to find accurate cross-streets in the mountains anyway.
LinkedIn might help business contacts connect on the road via TripIt, but Company Buzz might be a more relevant app for your needs.
Don’t be too specific in answer the question “What’s happening?” Not sure your platoon leader will appreciate a broadcast of “creeping up on hostiles now w @othersoldier….”
Be wary who you “friend."

#SupportOurTroops