I’ve mentioned it before, but I love movies and the way that regardless of what is going on in our economy, lives, politics, world, etc a good movie can totally take you out of it and introduce you into a world unknown for a period of time.  I also love the lessons that we can learn from watching them – on life, risk taking, love, friendship, forgiveness and of course recruiting & branding.

20 Years ago – An Oscar was THE goal.  It was credibility, notoriety, fame, fortune and the physical manifestation of success.  Today its is the same thing with a interesting way to select movies that half the US population never will see.

20 Years Ago – The MTV Movie Awards didn’t exist.  But in the last 19 years it has evolved into being the one place where movies that people actually watch over and over and over – regardless of their technical and acting quality can be recognized for simply being awesome.

The Oscar is like the HR’s answer to the “Best Places to Work List”

The MTV Movie award is where your friends love to work.

(Now, select the alternate ending of the blog that best meets your needs)

I’m A Company:

Having a “best places to work” icon on your career site is great and a huge feat and something every company should be extremely proud of.  But don’t expect it to sell its self any more.  People aren’t looking at that as the end all be all of great places to actually work.  Its an icon, like an Oscar, but we all know that where people fill the seats and spend the money isn’t always on the oscar contenders.   Make sure that you are selling your company for what makes it unique an some of the features that aren’t always considered on those lists.

MTV Movie awards does the basics (best female lead, best movie…blah blah) but what makes them stand out and unique is they do other categories like best kiss or best WTF moment.  And the other categories aren’t wasted on things like costume and make up design because, well, people EXPECT that to be there in movies now.  You only playing up your branding around your excellent benefits or other things that everyone else on that list can offer is actually putting you at the disadvantage.  Job Seekers are EXPECTING that – especially from a Oscar Worthy organization.

I’m A JobSeeker:

So, you are out there searching for a job.  You are like an actor that is reading over 2 scripts determining if your next best career move is the oscar worthy epic where you will have a bit part or if it is the potential summer break out hit where you will have a bit part.

Don’t feel pressure to “want” to work at the companies on the “best places to work” or where your friends love to work.  Its ok to work for the quirky off the wall place that everyone just loves to work at but doesn’t win any awards.  As you look for your next role – take a look at those lists, but also take a look at other places that you hear about, read about on social media or online or just randomly see a opening at.   Decide for yourself based on conversations with current employees, the feel you get when you walk in for your interview, the way you are treated throughout the process to make your decision and where the “best place to work for you”.

Sometimes things don’t go the way you expected them to.  The time, effort and personal investment we put into something that simply ended in nothing more than a simple “that’s it” in the story of life can be an emotional toll.   The high you ride when things are great and moving along in the right direction often opens its way to a melancholy state of contentment where you are sure they are moving still – but not sure if its the direction you want to be headed until the anti-climatic end to things that you held so close for so long is often more of a let down the then event its self.

I remember the same type of emotion when I was recruiting full time.  The emotional high you get off of things clicking together just right is amazing. When a candidate you know is a perfect gets an offer and you know it changes their life. When you were able to fill a position that had been sitting open for months because you thought of a different way to do it.   Then, the meh way you feel when you are scoring a few wins, but not any slam dunks then the downturn you get when things start going wrong.  The offer you sent out was declined.  The sure thing candidate blew it with the hire manager. The person that sounded so great on the phone was a dud in real life.  You start second guessing what you do, how you missed the signs and your role in the events that played out.

Its at that point you need to take your Big Girl Pill and suck it up.  You have to realize the life (and business lessons) that you are learning or be doomed to repeat them again.

What you learn via a Big Girl Pill:

1. People make mistakes.  If you don’t – then you are making the mistake to assume you don’t make mistakes.  Don’t dwell on your mistakes and don’t hold mistakes over other peoples heads.
2. Learn from everything.  Whether its you or someone else that you watch crash and burn – understand what happened and how you can do things differently.
3. Get over yourself.  You can NOT control other people’s actions.  You can only control your own actions and how you respond to other people’s behavior.  Don’t dwell on things you can’t change.  Don’t wish people would change.
4. Be a friend. Even when someone doesn’t deserve it.  Being compassionate and understanding gives you more than it gives anyone else.  So this is really a bit of a selfish one, but being a bit@h really doesn’t do any good.
5. Grow up. Not everything you do is going to be great.  You will fail.  A lot.  You will suck.  A lot.  Don’t be a baby and blame other people – be accountable when you F up.
6. You are awesome.  No matter what goes wrong, if you tried your best then that is all you (or anyone else) can ask of you. Don’t doubt and second guess yourself.  Revert back to #2 as needed.  (Let the Gen Y color’s fly)

A big girl pill isn’t always the easiest thing to swallow.  It requires you to evaluate your self and your role in your life.  It requires you to make adjustments and learn.  It requires you to have confidence, modesty, empathy and humility all at once.  It requires you to be able to move on.  It may not be the easiest thing to swallow, but it will allow you to grow and develop faster than anything else professionally ever could.

In the real world people are cautious about what and how they say things.  There is something about looking someone in the eye or hearing their voice on the phone that changes the mental decision making process between what you want to say to someone and what you actually do say.  It is in that situation that your brains decision making process kicks into overdrive and helps you make good decisions not to upset, hurt, offend, etc.

In my real world life, I get faced with a tough decision (or lets face it, an easy one) and I carefully analyze it, weigh the risks, potential outcomes of each possible option, the impact it will have on all of the parties involved and make a educated decision based on those factors.  What wins is the path that seems the most logical.  I rarely make a decision based on emotional drivers.

In social media however, most people just put it out there (me included!!!).  I don’t always think through what I do or say or the larger, longer term impact that it can have.  From a decision making factor it is like taking a few shots of tequila then exposing me to 2000+ people to say exactly what I think.  We forget that much like when we say things in our real life, we can’t really take it back.  In fact its worse in social media because the electronic record is there forever.

The complete opposite tends to hold true for most organizations that are tightly controlling their “branding” – There is so much time spend doing the analyzing of what you should/shouldn’t put out there that they often come across so vanilla that a potential employee doesn’t really know them at all.  Your corporate facebook fan page, twitter accounts, corporate blog, etc  are all an extension of your organization and what you put out there about your organization – both good and bad – needs to be analyzed just like you were saying or presenting it to someone face to face.

When you are sitting in an interview with someone or talking to people at a BBQ – what do you say then (positive) about your company?  When they are frustrated or get a call from a headhunter – what makes employees stay with you?  Its typically not what is on your traditional branding material and on the information you feed out online.

I’m not suggesting you dive overboard and go to the extreme that a lot of us do as individuals – putting things out there that you probably shouldn’t have.  But, I am encouraging brands to move in that direction and be more human.  Be more real.  Be more vulnerable. Show the quirks and the not so positive part while highlighting the rest.

In doing so, you’ll gain the people that appreciate your company for who it is and want to work their regardless.

Just like the people who stay friends with me even when I do (and say) really stupid things.

I’m new to Tapas so I love going with people who know what they are doing.  They look at a menu with 100′s of options and just shout out numbers at people that pass by.  Food just shows up in totally random increments – nothing in order, not knowing what exactly to expect, assuming its going to be what you are looking for.

Tapas is like a dream eating situation – if you don’t like something you quickly move on – no commitment, no second guessing if you made the right decision, no envying across the table at what everyone else got.  You just take a few bites and sample a little bit of everything – its like a food nirvana. That is until you find one that you really like and you realize that everyone else also liked that one the best and you can’t ever again figure out what it was or how to order more because the plate is empty, replacements have been distributed already and you have nothing left to even show the waiter as an example – any remnants of that favorite one have already been devoured by the hungry table who is really just eating ‘real food’ to fill in for more plates of bacon wrapped dates to come from the kitchen and sangria pitchers to be refilled and the waiter.  I tried to reorder something i liked once and got a plate of sausage.   I don’t like sausage.  I wanted more spicy chicken.  I suck at ordering Tapas.

As with so many other random things in life, I immediately saw the correlation with hiring.

How Tapas is the Same as Recruiting

Recruiters = Diners.

They are like me – the hungry consumer waiting to eat and not exactly sure what we are going to get.  We hope that what we are asking for is what we are really looking for and we often go on what others have done before us as a basis of future activity.

Tapas = Applicants

There are hundreds of options out there – each one slightly different from the next but on the menu they all kind of look the same.  The applicants (tapas) fly at the recruiters (diners) at crazy speeds – each being pushed my the servers (ahh….think 3rd party recruiters) that are telling you what they have and why its great.

Eating = Screening

Actually eating the various tapas that fly at you and narrowing down the ones that you really like is kinda like the screening/interviewing phase.  The hungry diners (recruiters) are so busy going around getting a little bit of everything off the plates that they don’t always pay close attention to what they are sampling.  You are excluding the candidates you don’t like, trying to find more of ones you did – and overlooking the details that will really matter in the long run when you try to replicate the hire again.  This is the most important part of the tapas and recruiting experience – yet we often rush through it seeing if there is something better – overlooking the greatness we already have.

ReOrder = Interview

Know what you want – pay attention in the earlier phases so when you get to the point of the interview (re-order) you are asking for what you really want and need from that candidate.  Don’t just ask questions at random – make sure you target in based on their needs and yours.  You don’t want to end up with the wrong thing because you didn’t pay attention and ordered wrong after being left with just a table full of empty plates.

Moral of the story is to pay attention when eating your applicants Tapas so you don’t end up with sausage when you wanted chicken.  Oh, and I totally love Tapas now.

This article originally appeared on the HireVue blog and in this month’s issue of THE VUE, HireVue’s monthly newsletter. To sign up, go to theHireVue home page and scroll down to the newsletter sign up on the right.

Without great employees even companies with the best products can struggle to be successful. But in the mix of all of those resumes and names that come through your door, how do you actually measure candidate quality? Measuring candidate quality can be broken down into three distinct parts of the hiring process:

1) Pre-Screening
2) Interviewing
3) Post Interview

The pre-screening phase is one of the most critical and where untrained recruiting teams (and poorly designed process) often miss high potential candidates.   In this phase, the actual measurement is frequently managed in a much more quantitative way through Applicant Tracking systems or other tools that do pre-employment screening, the dreaded “knock-out” questions or through a series of more open ended interview style questions.  While these pre-screening methods are effective, and relatively proven – they can leave the door open to over look high-potential candidates or those that would have highly transferable skills. That’s why whenever possible I recommend more interactive pre-screening methods including phone screens and especially the virtual type video interviews that allow hiring teams to see candidate’s thinking on their feet as their responses to those pre-defined knock-out questions are recorded and stored for review. Companies like HireVue have made this extremely simple and cost effective.

The second phase, the Interviewing phase, is where the actual candidate quality can be determined.  It is where you can see (or hear) a candidates passion for your organization and the position, see the cultural fit for yourself and determine a match.  It is where you can truly learn about the success and failures they have had – and how they learned from each of them.  It is the most important part of the process and also the most time consuming. The power of a solution like HireVue is that it actually allows you to reach a wider set of candidates with less manpower behind the process and lets the recruiting team focus on evaluating the quality of a person’s answers on a particular topic or question in an effective and efficient way.

The final phase, the post-interview phase, was traditionally thought of as the most reliable when it came to determining candidate quality.  Unfortunately, many companies have stopped the practice of speaking freely about past employees and candidates have learned to share only the very best of their references with a company.   In cases where a reference does speak negatively – other questions have to be addressed – was it a bad company/job fit, was there a personality conflict, are there other extenuating circumstances that would explain why your star candidate wasn’t a star at 1 of his last 3 companies?

Even for companies who follow this process measuring quality can be pretty subjective since it depends so much on your company culture, the needs of the job and the expectations of the hiring manager. At the end of the day, making a successful hire means depending on your people. To do this, you need to make sure to give them every opportunity to bring their knowledge and experience to bear in every stage of the hiring process without crushing them under the weight of the work. I see video playing an enormous part in that over the coming years. It allows your hiring teams to see more, evaluate quicker and at a higher level of accuracy and, if coupled with the right tools, collect feedback and gain consensus far more efficiently. Video tools can be enormously helpful, but they will never replace the highly skilled recruiter. They are the actual moving parts of the company that get things done, win the wins and manage your culture.

It is the first business day of 2010 (pronounced twenty-ten FYI).  There are still no flying cars or teleportation devices.  I still have to type this blog out and can’t just think it.  No cancer shot has been discovered so the likelihood of I Am Legend actually happening next year is unlikely.  However, we are still in a recession that I thought we were buying ourselves out of last year and there is still historically high unemployment rates.  One thing that has also stuck around into the new year is the A&E TV show Hoarders and over the last week I caught up on the new season of Hoarders.

Hoarders was as gross and disturbing as it normally is. If you don’t watch it – they basically go in and clean up homes of people that hoard – most of them are old, crazy, cat ladies.  It follows their families that have ignored or enabled it for so long that the hoarder has lost their children, pets or their sense of reality.  On one of the episodes I watched a they were cleaning out a woman’s house who seemed to have 2, 3, 4, or even 10 of the exact same thing laying around and they found a cat.  A dead cat.  Then another.  2 dead cats.  In her house.  She didn’t know she ever had a cat.  As I was watching that, I couldn’t help but think about what state of chaos you have to be in to not realize you have someone else’s dead cats in your living room.

But in reality, it’s what most companies (and recruiters) do every day with their applicant tracking system.  For the most part, candidates are just dead cats in the living room of corporate software.

Many hoarders problems aren’t necessarily that they keep so much stuff – its that they don’t know what they have so they spend crazy amounts of money to acquire more of the exact same.  Then they fail to organize and keep track of it properly so they can actually use it effectively.  In the same light, Recruiting problems are not caused by the number of resumes they get it –  they are caused by software issues and  poor process decisions that they typically use.

1.  Software Issues – Many (even well known) Applicant Tracking Systems don’t have solid search functionality.  The ones that do, often make it cumbersome and not easy to work with. There aren’t easy ways to track/tag, manage and interact with candidates that aren’t attached to a particular requisition.  It isn’t a new issue, its been beat to a pulp in many a blog postings already in 2009 and it is something that a few of the vendors are in the process of correcting.

2.  Process Issues – This could (and IMO does) tie closely into #1 – but most companies don’t make searching their own database a priority.  When they need a candidate – the first instinct is to post the position and see what comes in.  The first step should be to stop, take a look around them and see what they already have.  That candiate in the database may still be alive and kicking and wanting to come work for you, but not actively searching for opportunities.

The high unemployment rates are creating an overwhelming volume of  candidates coming into ATS’s.  Candidates are coming in, sometimes totally unnoticed, and are hiding under the couch like that cat did. Sitting, Waiting, Hoping to be found. Unfortunately, time consuming search functions and poor results stop many of us from from even looking.  Like the hoarders, the recruiters are preoccupied with other priorities and companies software is so packed full of all of these resumes and people that don’t work for them right now, but may in the future (Common quote on the show Hoarders, BTW) that the one they may really want – may not ever be found.  And the candidate disappears under the mess of other, less qualified candidates because they were lost in the database.

So, as we move forward to our flying cars and teleportation that I was sure would be here by now, lets at least stop treating resumes like the dead cat under the couch we forgot about.

Are your hiring manager REALLY satisfied with the job you do?  follow this blog postposted by Sarah White on June 15, 2009

Last night, I attended my 29th 311 concert.  While the anticipation (I love anticipating something, often more than the actual event), songs, band members and concert itself seemed so familiar after all these years, there was one thing that really stood out to me.  We are getting older.  

The drive down was a mix of conversation about what our favorite venues/shows have been over the years (I am partial to the 1998 Grand Rapids show in a tiny venue when first got to meet them after a show),  where others were at that weren’t able to make it with us this year, and work.  I know, I said work – 5 years ago, the thought wouldn’t have crossed our minds – but now there are budgets to manage, hiring decisions to be made, marketing strategies to be planned.  It just always is there for all of us.  

Let me start (the part you may actually care about) by saying that I am the only recruiting industry person in our group of friends and I am in a group of what I refer to as “hiring managers who don’t think we (recruiters) actually do anything or provide value”.  One of those guys by chance read my blog last week and wanted to learn more about it – potentially for the sales/marketing future.  About 30 seconds in, the eyes glared over and he lost interest.  Again – I think it is amazing, but not everyone else is on board yet (I think back to video resumes – but I will get to next week).   

The conversation then quickly turned to why do you (by you I assume they mean recruiters in general since I am no longer actively recruiting) do various things in the process to make the hiring managers life so difficult. Another one chimed in asking why they never seemed to be listened to.  While you can say these are isolated cases, from my last 4 years in consulting, I can tell you those struggles seem to effect companies across the board in terms of size, revenue, and ‘staying power’.

Personally, I know that my goal was always to be a partner to my hiring managers – to give them the support & guidance they may need to help them make the right decision.  It was not to cause issues or put up roadblocks in the process.  My goal was always doing what was in the best long term interest of the department, manager and organization.  I am sure many of you feel the same but – are you hiring managers really satisfied or are they tolerating the process you have in place?

If you want to really have a true partnership with your hiring managers, you need to make sure that they have had and continue to have a say in what you are doing and how the process is working for them.  In the same fashion that you are (or should be) continually improving your process from the candidates perspective, your hiring managers deserve the same.  Can you honestly say you really know how your hiring manager feels about the process?  Do you really care? 

If you don’t care – don’t bother going any further.  Save yourself the extra 2 minutes in your day and get back to whatever it is that you were doing.

If you do care (and this should be almost everyone in the corporate setting) then there are a few quick and simple things that you can do without having to create a big drama filled world of surveys and focus groups and ugghhh….

(I will forwarn you that this will potentially seem obvious, but I have also found that there seems to be a general lack of common sense the more overworked we are and the longer things have been broken)

1. Talk to your hiring managers about the type of person they are looking for in the role – not just the skills and background.  What type of EI matters in this role?  How will the ideal person effect the balance of the team – what is currently lacking?  
2. Talk to your hiring managers.  That is it.  Even if you don’t have an opening with them, every once in a while shoot an email (you can have some pre-templated up), pick up a phone and just say hi, or (for those of you with the option)  just go by their office or cube.  This should be done with no other motives or agenda other than getting to know them (respectfully) as a colleague, or dare I say it, eventually a work friend.   This goes a long way in continuing to build a relationship of trust and respect.
3. Ask them directly if the process is working for them.  Just like with everything else in life, you can’t possible learn if you don’t have the cahones to ask the question.  The worst thing that will happen is they say “no, it sucks” and you realize that you have an issue.  Don’t take their thoughts on the process personal – it (normally) will have nothing to do with you.  Hiring managers like to have a say in things – sometimes a small little fix can make the relationship and hiring process better all around.  
4. Ask if they are comfortable with who they get to see in the process.  Especially if you (or they) are new to your company OR you are new to work with each other.  Do they need to see more until they are comfortable, do they feel like you are wasting their time with too many candidates?  Are the candidates you are giving them REALLY what they are looking for in the person?
5. Look at your metrics – are you sending over more than 2-3 people to be interviewed? (It could mean a lack of trust or a bad judge of quality people during the screen process – both should be addressed) Are you really providing them with the value that an “expert” should be providing them with?

Again, this doesn’t seem like rocket science, but when I listen over and over to hiring managers complaining about what are relatively simple fixes or larger scale, process related problems.   These quick fixes can give you an overview of what is going on with your hiring managers and let you know if you may have a larger problem to address.

This weekend I did a whirlwind tour of California and  managed to make it through Monterey Bay, Yosemite & San Francisco all in 2 1/2 days.

Here is a list of 10 things I learned on this trip:

1.  Avis will not let you pick up your car 12 minutes early.  You have to sit and wait.

2.  If you let a surfer on a bike in Santa Cruz pass, instead of waving you get the hang loose sign

3.  There is a limit to how much clam chowder you can eat (Trust me, I am shocked myself!)

4.  Some 16 year olds think that the new “Come on Eileen” is not a remix, rather a new song

5.  It is amazing to be in a place of nature so much bigger than yourself

6. A 7 mile hike in the woods is better than a 2 mile run on a treadmill

7.  Roundtable Pizza is still my favorite pizza of all time

8. San Francisco is way cooler than I expected

9. Relaxing & Sleeping on vacation is overrated

10.  I enjoy reading (this will come into play in a future blog posting)

While on the surface, these things may not seem to have anything in common with each other, let alone recruiting – I assue you – in my own strange way, I think they really do.  You see, for the last few years we have been bombarded with the importance of your employment brand and how valuable it is to organizations.  We have (At least I have) sat through hours of webinars, articles, presentations and discussions about why branding what the best thing ever and the million different ways that it can be done to make you the best organization out there in terms of the way potential employees view you.  Through all of it, I have actually always wondered why no one took it the step further and discussed not only how important it was to do the branding on the front end and to really live the brand but be absolutely positive that your process upholds the image and brand you want to project.  To me, it is all about the perception matching up with the reality of what is going on in your organization.

Take my list for example and you can see that there are a few spots where what you think would happen actually do.

2. If you let a surfer on a bike in Santa Cruz pass, instead of waving you get the hang loose sign

5. It is amazing to be in a place of nature so much bigger than yourself

6. A 7 mile hike in the woods is better than a 2 mile run on a treadmill

7. Roundtable Pizza is still my favorite pizza of all time

For me the perception of what the image or brand had been presented as (Yosemite is awe inspiring and amazing, Surfers are friendly and laid back) is exactly what happened when I was able to experience it for my self.

On the other hand is where your expectations are not met with the reality of the situation.

1. Avis will not let you pick up your car 12 minutes early. You have to sit and wait.

3. There is a limit to how much clam chowder you can eat

8. San Francisco is way cooler than I expected

9. Relaxing & Sleeping on vacation is overrated

10. I actually enjoy reading (this will come into play in my next blog posting)

For me – I was actually quite surprised at things on my trip – Avis whose motto is “we try harder” refused to let a number of people check in for their cars earlier than they had anticipated.  One couple next to us had to wait 2 minutes.  What exactly are they trying harder at?

San Francisco, which we went to on a total whim, was not the homeless infested, scary city you sometimes hear about here in the midwest.  In fact – I absolutely fell in love with it and plan to go back for a full weekend later this summer.

OK – so, some of you are still wondering how this relates to recruiting – basically – make sure your branding matches what is the real experience the candidates have when they come into your recruiting process.

If your branding is amazing talking about the ‘people focus’ (or what ever else you may be focused on) and someone comes through the recruiting process and finds it to be disconnected, hard to get responses, generic and impersonal, even if your company really does have a great ‘people focus’ for its employees your recruiting process doesn’t allow that to shine through and your image or brand is not meeting the expectations and is just working against you. 

On the flip side, if you have poor branding but your process is great then it gives them a great impression of you as an organization – but it really isn’t working in your favor.  Not properly branding your organization is like a company forgetting to advertise they have a product to sell.  You could be missing some great prospective employees who just honestly don’t know who you are or what to do.  In this case you are like the 16 year olds who thought “Come on Eileen” was a new song – excited to find a song they like, but clueless where it came from.

So - Brand or Process – When it comes down to it – what really matters?  Both!

The reality of the situation is that today, a company needs to have a solid employment brand that is an accurate reflection of who the company is and what they expect/want from future employees.  It should also have a process that is in line with their employment brand and who they are as an organization.  (The expectation & experience should line up – Yosemite for example)  

So, the overall moral of the story is the fact that your employment brand is important, but the process that you employ from resume submission through start date is equally as important and should be constantly reviewed and evaluated.