Midyear Report Card: Mike’s Predictions for 2011

Midyear Report Card: Mike’s Predictions for 2011

Segment(s) of the TSC Impacted: All

This January I continued the tradition of trying to predict what was to be in the new year.  As I did last year, I thought this would be a good moment to take pause and see how those predictions are coming along.

I think I did a little better with this year’s midyear report card than last, but some things remain uncertain.

Recovery, recovery, recovery

Grade- Who knows at this point!

Prediction- This year, especially the latter half, we will be fully focused on the economic recovery that will finally become wide spread.

That is not to say that we will see strong growth in the employment sector and I would be surprised to see the national unemployment rate drop to anything below 8% or even 8.5%, but all of us will hopefully see that things have started to turn around.

Commentary- Well, we are all talking about the recovery, but more in the way people waiting for a late bus talk about what happened.  So we have some pockets of recovery, but it’s really questionable if this is going to take hold throughout the nation anytime soon.   Just a month ago, I thought this would be a very different entry, but this economy is struggling to get to its feet more than any other post recession economy.  I still think we will have a national unemployment rate that is somewhere between 8.5% and 9% later this year, which is still better than it was.

Mobile will become the hot thing in Recruiting

Grade- A

Prediction-   People are going from the mobile experience being something of a novelty to an expectation.  Someone will be using their phone in their living room just feet from their PC, but will expect to be able to search jobs without waiting for the PC to boot up, update, etc.

Commentary- I think this was one prediction that has really started to take hold.  Talking about mobile is wide spread, more and more companies have mobile sites (including mine) and the first ATS/TMS to provide a mobile experience for candidates (not just Recruiters like many) is available on the market.

Geo-Targeted recruitment advertising will grow, but not be wide-spread

Grade- C

Prediction- Products like FourSquare, Google and Facebook equivalents as well as others will find their way onto the media/social media plans for a small number of companies. Many other companies will watch to see what can be done with this platform.

Commentary- The part about it not being wide spread is definitely true, and there are some companies that are using this, but not many.  This is something that may catch on next year for some, and many will likely table this until the war for talent fully returns.

Social media will flatten out

Grade- A

Prediction- This is the year that we will see social media start to flatten out.  But that’s not to say it won’t continue to grow, it will just do so at a more modest pace.

Commentary- We’ve seen the demise of MySpace (although I would have never predicted Timberlake buying it) and other platforms are starting to or continuing to flatten out.  LinkedIn showed some increases in traffic because of new services, but according to Quantcast, Facebook is growing, but  slowing and Twitter seems to be possibly starting a decline.  This does not spell the beginning of the end by any means, rather that it has reached a new level.  It will be interesting to see how Google+ impacts all of this.

If you have any questions, comments or anything you would like to add, feel free to send them my way!  All the best to you until next month!

© 2011 Michael K. Peterson, All Rights Reserved

Let’s make employee opinion surveys meaningful…

Let’s make employee opinion surveys meaningful…

Segment(s) of the TSC Impacted: Your organizations ability to source candidates and Your organizations ability to sell open positions

At most organizations employee opinion surveys (EOS) are viewed skeptically.  Employees roll their eyes, thinking that once again they are asking for my opinion and it will lead to nothing.   The managers, namely the ones that need the feedback most, hate this exercise because it only confirms what they don’t want to admit.  Human Resources beats their head against the wall because they have to administer this ritual only to be frustrated by the combination of suspected poor managers being confirmed as such with actual data and the lack of willingness by leadership to do anything about it.

I could point out the obvious things that we should be doing, anchoring portions of the manager’s annual bonus to their EOS score, recognizing those that are doing a great job or, the most obvious, simply doing something about those that perform poorly.

But I am not here to point out the obvious… I am here to share something different.

What if, we borrowed some concepts from the familiar practice of peer reviews on product and retail sites like Amazon.com?  What if we put the overall EOS score for each department on their job postings?

Resistance
I’ll be the first to admit that my own organization probably wouldn’t go as far as putting every departments overall score on the departments postings, but I think this is something to move toward.

Certainly the knee-jerk reaction would be “are you crazy?” from both leadership and Human Resources.  VPs and Directors would immediately know and be concerned about the impact on recruiting for poor performing departments… after all, who in their right mind would apply for a position where the department’s score is 1 out of 5 or even 2 out of 5?

The real problem
What is more disappointing is that we allow unsuspecting candidates to apply for those positions out of ignorance…  How upset would you be if you found out that a retail website was actually withholding or manipulating peer review scores on their products?  I suspect you would be pretty pissed.  If pervasive enough, there would likely be investigations and inquiries from the authorities and tremendous brand damage…  But here we are, essentially doing the same thing!

But once again, since we all live in the Information Age, anyone that thinks they control information simply by suppressing it is delusional at best and is doing more harm than good.

As we all should have learned by now from social media, just because we aren’t talking doesn’t mean that no one is talking.

The problem is the person doing the talking is generally a disgruntled employee that is really “motivated” and they are going to any number of sites to let everyone know what they think about your poor performing department.

Don’t believe me?  Go to Glassdoor.com and see what is listed about your company.  This is in addition to anything people are saying on social media and to their friends.

So once again, we have turned the conversation over to a wacko and we’re hoping that no one listens…

What’s worse is that you can’t win either way on these sites… any positive reviews are a best viewed with suspicion that the post was from someone who has other motivations (i.e. HR).

A better way
Now let’s imagine an alternative where your company takes the bold step of posting all their EOS scores.

Managers would suddenly pay attention to the scores, for different reasons, but they will be focused them.  They could be concerned about being able to recruit staff (and funny the bad ones probably need to recruit the most), they may be concerned about how their director of VP would react, but I suspect for most it will be that they simply don’t want to look bad in front of everyone.   What is nice is that the ones that need help will be more motivated to seek it.

Some employees that weren’t being honest before will be honest now.  Why?  Because even the semi-smart ones will realize that if I am slamming the boss just to slam them, they will have a hard time hiring new people to replace those that left, leaving more people for the remaining staff.

Employees will also see that the survey has value.  Instead of just being an exercise of checking off the EOS box for the next “Best Placeto Work” survey there is useful, actionable data and rewards and consequences for managers.

Human Resources will finally see that something constructive is being done with the survey information and perhaps this will be just the beginning of things that make EOS worth it.

Candidates will obviously gravitate to higher rated departments and will likely respect the organization for putting the scores on postings.  The company would also get a great boost in word of mouth type recognition among prospective candidates for being open and honest.

Retention would also improve because candidates will make more informed decisions.  Your company would also decrease the brand damage from good talent coming into bad departments and leaving to tell anyone that may consider your company how bad it is.

Information on sites like Glassdoor would still be posted and reviewed, but if your site has EOS data on it, many prospective candidates would not feel the need to check the site.  Those that do go to Glassdoor will realize that they can check the comments posted there against the EOS information to see if it matches or if there is inconsistency between the two, allowing them to make a more informed decision.

Ways to implement
I would be surprised if most companies posted EOS scores for all their departments, but there is a less threatening way to at least start adding some of the information.

I suggest that you start with posting EOS information about the best performing departments only.  You could work with Marketing or your Advertising Agency to create a special logo that indicates if a department is a “Top 10” department as rated by its employees, or the top department at a particular site, etc.

This allows the concept to get started as a recognition program.  Which will encounter significantly less resistance after all, how could leadership not support both lending credibility to the EOS and having a cheap (nearly free) way to recognize high performing departments?

This could set the stage to later expand the program in the future to include more and more scores until they become more widely used.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to send them my way!

© 2011 Michael K. Peterson, All Rights Reserved

Does .jobs matter?

Does .jobs matter?

Segment(s) of the TSC Impacted: Branding and candidate awareness, Your organizations ability to source candidates

Somewhat recently, there has been a lot of discussion about .jobs.  Much of the discussion that I have seen has little to do with whether or not this is a good idea or not.  Most of it centers on the controversy between SHRM, Employ Media who SHRM partnered with to manage the top level domain and ICANN, the organization that essentially manages major functions of the internet.

ICANN has brought action against Employ Media stating they are violating the .jobs charter and brings into question whether or not SHRM got in over their heads and/or partnered with the right people.

I think there is a larger more important question that may make all of this largely irrelevant- Does .jobs matter?

For those of you that aren’t familiar, .jobs is a top level domain (TLD) similar to the more popular .com, .edu and .gov.  ICANN released .jobs to SHRM with the thought that the leading HR organization would be able to manage the registration process more effectively than the existing process that has been in place for all other domains.  This process is where domain registration companies take registration requests and if it’s available the registration is yours.

On a side note that I have to point out, when you register a .jobs domain, you first go to Employ Media’s site, which then has… wait for it…links to the same domain registration companies that handle all the other registrations anyway, now that’s value add SHRM- thanks for adding needless layers and now legal complication to things!

Side bar over, back to the .jobs domain… The intended purpose for .jobs was to become a “shortcut” that people could use to get to career sites.  So a company like Ford could have the domain ford.jobs.

On the surface this sounds interesting, but I have to wonder, who’s been wanting this?

Employers?
As an employer, I don’t see this as a huge benefit… my career site is decent, we market it well using a wide variety of tools, etc.  It’s reasonably well designed and most people can find what they are looking for.

On the other hand, the .jobs domain is very inexpensive to register and you could simply have the .jobs URL point to your career site and you’re pretty well covered.  So there isn’t anything compelling against getting it.

Job seekers?
It’s pretty rare that candidates can’t find a companies website and/or the jobs on it… if they can’t the sites usually poorly constructed, or the jobs aren’t listed or the candidate is computer illiterate.  So some may be interested in the convenience of the .jobs domain, but I am not sure people would not seek positions on non-.jobs domains in the same manner I could eventually see job seekers not apply for jobs with companies that lack a mobile or social media presence.

Job boards?
Certainly the job board industry isn’t interested in it.  In fact, they are leading the charge against the .jobs domain because they see it as a threat.  Just imagine a day where job seekers can find jobs on corporate career sites or by using something like SEO, SEM, Indeed, SimplyHired, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn… if only these things were a reality … oh wait… that’s right, they are aren’t they?  Well job boards you keep chasing away the big scary .jobs domain while everyone else eats your lunch…

Conclusion

So I guess there isn’t anyone that is clamoring for this.  While there are a lot of companies that have their .jobs domain (including mine) I think they have it because it is cheap and simple.

And just because a lot of companies have .jobs domains doesn’t mean that it will become anything significant or strategically or tactically important.

What’s my opinion?  .jobs doesn’t matter, but it will be widely used for a time and then fade away.  I think it’s an idea whose time has long passed that is only being saved by its simplicity and very modest cost.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to send them my way!

© 2011 Michael K. Peterson, All Rights Reserved

Mike’s Pedictions for 2011

Mike’s Predictions for 2011

Segment(s) of the TSC Impacted: All

Once again, it is the time of year that we all reflect on what the previous year meant and where we are heading in the next one.

Last year I did OK with my predictions, am I hope that this year will be better, so here are my thoughts on what might come to be in 2011. I am looking forward to hearing what you think will be coming too.

Recovery, recovery, recovery
This year, especially the latter half, we will be fully focused on the economic recovery that will finally become wide spread.

That is not to say that we will see strong growth in the employment sector and I would be surprised to see the national unemployment rate drop to anything below 8% or even 8.5%, but all of us will hopefully see that things have started to turn around.

A handful of employment markets will return to unemployment levels that are close to pre-recession “normal” levels, but not many.

Mobile will become the hot thing in Recruiting
We’ve already seen some companies moving into mobile, and this year will only see a continued acceleration in this space with the growth of tablet computers and the introduction of the iPhone on Verizon.

Many companies don’t see the need to push their jobs to a mobile platform, but I think they are confusing geo-targeted advertising with a mobile site.

The need to make our career sites more mobile platform friendly has little to do with the fact that the platform is mobile and has more to do with shifting expectations of consumers/job seekers.

People are going from the mobile experience being something of a novelty to an expectation. Someone will be using their phone in their living room just feet from their PC, but will expect to be able to search jobs without waiting for the PC to boot up, update, etc.

If you don’t believe me, let me ask you… How many times a day do you check your personal email on your phone vs. a desktop? As these devices become more and more capable, this will only grow.

Geo-Targeted recruitment advertising will grow, but not be wide-spread
Products like FourSquare, Google and Facebook equivalents as well as others will find their way onto the media/social media plans for a small number of companies. Many other companies will watch to see what can be done with this platform.

In my opinion, there are two groups of companies that it makes sense to really explore these platforms. Companies with a workforce that is geographically sensitive and companies with facilities in cities that are extremely congested.

A workforce that is geographically sensitive mainly consists of people that predominantly work near their home. The demographic of some of this group makes this approach particularly appealing because of their adoption of new on line trends. I am speaking mainly about teens and those in college.

If you think about it, your friendly neighborhood teenager is not going to drive 15 miles to work at a fast food restaurant when they pass about 10 on the way and probably 4 before they get on the freeway.

College students are less sensitive, but their schedule makes finding a job close to campus a highly valued convenience.

Certainly this group is not limited to teens and college students. Any group that relies on public transportation or is paid a wage that would not support a significant expenditure on gasoline would also be a group to consider reaching out to with these platforms.

The second group, those that live in extremely congested cities would also show promise. This is a group that is more diverse vs. the somewhat narrow group of people that are geographically limited for reasons already described.

This group is interesting because it grows and shrinks because of gasoline prices and their impact on individuals, which makes nearly all of us potential members of this group.

The challenge in planning for this group is that the individual’s reaction to the price of gasoline depends on a variety of factors including disposable income, what vehicle they need to drive, how quickly they can change the vehicle they drive, availability and feasibility of public transportation, etc.

The reality is that gasoline prices will continue to trend upward over time without a major shift in consumption, so with each increase in the price of gasoline more people join this group.

What should a company do? Companies have an opportunity to test geo-targeted advertising with a geographically sensitive group of jobs. So if you have people that don’t have the need or ability to manage a commute, then I would start with them. Perhaps you have customer service staff, support staff or retail locations. When looking at your media plan to fill some of these roles, include some platforms like FourSquare. This will give you a chance to try it out, learn some lessons and perhaps more importantly, be better prepared to quickly expand the campaign to take advantage of your location if gas prices spike or if another change in the market can be turned to your advantage.

Social media will flatten out
This is the year that we will see social media start to flatten out. But that’s not to say it won’t continue to grow, it will just do so at a more modest pace.

According to Quantcast LinkedIn seems to be keeping relatively steady and Facebook is leveling off. There is speculation that MySpace may not make it through the year and it is known that they are trying to find a buyer for themselves. Only Twitter and FourSquare are both continuing to grow their visits at rates we have grown accustomed to for social media of the past.

What does this mean? I don’t think it means it’s time to abandon our work on LinkedIn and Facebook. Most of you are still using job boards and if I thought you should abandon anything it is sites like Careerbuilder and Monster.

Nor is it time to shift resources to focus on Twitter and FourSquare.

It merely means that the early platforms have started to reach maturity. Let’s face it, if your grandmother is on Facebook that is a sign that the product has started to reach most of its potential market share.

This also means that we all need to shift our expectations. With the exception of perhaps MySpace, I believe there is still value in keeping a strong presence on Facebook and LinkedIn, we just can’t expect the increases in traffic that we may have become used to.

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to send them my way! All the best to you until next month!

© 2011 Michael K. Peterson, All Rights Reserved