Authentic Advertising

I came across this Adidas Ad on a blog and thought it was a very clever way to show authenticity and leadership with a print advertisement....

Creative Resumes

When I first started in recruiting I was trained to look past the flashiness of resumes and screen for experience and skill. This training carried through my first few roles. When I started recruiting in the PR industry I came across resumes that were highly creative and memorable. I ran one of them by a senior member of my group and she asked me if I was going to reach out to the candidate. I said I wasn't sure because the candidate didn't have much experience in the area I was hiring for. She asked me if creativity was important for the type of person I typically hire. I said of course. She asked me why I wouldn't then at least talk to this person. Duh...she obviously had a good point. So I did and I ended up being very impressed. This is when I took a 360 when it came to creative resumes. The candidates that do this stand out to me, they break through noise and they leave a lasting impression whether they are hired or not.

I included some pictures of resumes that I have received. These aren't all of them by any means. I received a resume that was created on top of a cake using frosting. We hired this person and he is a high performing employee. I was also sent a resume that was folded into a pyramid and then had another copy crumpled in a ball in the center. One candidate sent me her shoe with a note saying if the shoe fits… I have also received some interesting thank you cards. One was hand made and had our team logo on it with a piece of gum taped to the inside—it said, “Here is something to chew on while you consider my candidacy.”

If you are going to create one you do need to have an understanding of your audience. If you are an accountant interviewing with one of the Big 5’s you probably don’t want to send one of these. If you are applying at an ad agency you are probably pretty safe. The rest most likely fall somewhere in between so proceed at your own risk. If you apply for a role with me though….you will probably capture my interest.

Coopetition, Brand & Transaction

Over the past several years of recruiting in PR I've built a pretty strong network with great people! Some of them we hired and others went to other firms or corporations. Some have come and some have gone. Others work on the next floor or a cube or two away from me. No matter where people in my network are though, whether they currently work with me or not, there are some that are like beacons in my network. They are rememberable, there is some level of attraction to want to reach out to them over an over again and when you do it's like you just left off your last conversation with them. I often ask myself why these people are different? What is about them that is different than the next person I just talked to. After all, I'm a recruiter, so I talk to 100's and 1000's of people in a given year.

I think there are few things that sets these people apart and this ultimately affects your company's brand. You may ask how I make this connection and I'll tell, but I do believe it's an underestimated impact on brand image. Those beacons in my network first and foremost are ultra authentic. It's like when you meet people when you are a kid and then lose contact with them for a while and then reconnect. Some of those people you reconnect with and it feels like you never lost touch. They are who they were. Others you feel like you don't know anymore. I don't know if this is authenticity or just that people can completely change. That being said there are those people that have so much soul and are so human and self aware that they are always who they are. These are people that I tend to trust implicitly which is the second factor. So the first is that they are authentic which leads to the second which is trust. Some of those beacons that I talked about work for competitors. That said I can still trust these people when I reconnect with them. I know our relationship is important to them and that they will protect this first. This leads me to my third factor which is that each encounter is building upon a relationship and not a transaction. If I'm working with a candidate and they decline joining our agency I don't see this at all affecting my relationship with that person. The relationship is separate from the transaction of hiring someone. Nobody in my network should ever feel that not doing something they don't want to do will affect the relationship and vice versa. If anything this should strengthen the relationship as long as each individual is being transparent with each other. This is the last factor. What they are saying they mean and what I'm describing about our environment is true, the good, the bad and the ugly. When all of these factors are in place the relationship moves beyond a business acquaintance and becomes real--you start to really know who that person is, you feel like yourself when you interact with them and this ultimately compels you to nurture those relationships--it feels good to do so.

So how does this affect brand. When people you connect with like this go to places you trust that they are choosing great places to work because they are great people. When they say they have picked a bad place their word means a lot to you. When those people you don't connect with go to places it makes you wonder if there are other people like them there. When you are building a company brand or employment brand the authenticity of your interactions with people can make or break this. The more authentic, the stronger the connections, the brighter those beacons become and more people are drawn to those beacons. When this happens the more your authentic brand message gets shared. When people do join your organization they will say everything you told me about this place was true and good or bad you will have protected your relationship--only goodness comes from this.

No matter what you do in life, be it sales, advertising, marketing, PR treat people like they are your brother or your sister and not a transaction. This isn't only important for the business you work for but for the authenticity of your entire life!

Bizzare Shape Found at Saturn's North Pole

This is totally off the subject of PR recruiting but I love it when I see things that are still so bizarre and unexplained about our universe. These are new pictures of Saturn and they found a hexagon shape at Saturn's north pole. This defies everything we know about weather patterns. There is still so much we don't know about our universe. Here is a link to the article: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm

Waggener Edstrom Lunatic Fringe 2007

My blog has mostly been about recruitment technology and for the most part spoke to an audience of my peers. More and more I find that candidates are interested to know more about who they are speaking with before their interview and often will Google me and read a few blog entries. For this reason I'm going to change the focus of my blog to be more geared towards the industry I recruit for--Public Relations. I will probably keep it a little more broad than this though and include information on creative talent in general--advertising, marketing, PR, new media. To kick things off here is a YouTube video from Waggener Edstrom's agency business meetings last week!

Paying off a 1946 Parking Ticket--My Role Model...

Everybody seems to have role models in their lives, for me there is clearly one that stands above and beyond them all—my Grandfather. You know who your role model is when you hear their voice of reason before making a decision or wonder what they would have done in the same circumstance once you have made a decision. A story was just posted in the St. Petersburg Times about my Grandfather. This exemplifies why I’ve always aspired to be more like him….


$1 and debt-free
William Fogarty doesn't like obligations. So when he found a 1946 parking ticket, he paid it.

By DEMORRIS A. LEE
Published August 10, 2006
________________________________________

PALM HARBOR - William Fogarty doesn't know what the fuss is all about.

He simply forgot to pay a parking ticket. When he realized the oversight, the 86-year-old Palm Harbor retiree made good and mailed in the money order.

Why the hoopla?

It was for a $1 parking violation that occurred 60 years ago.

"My father always taught me to pay my debts and any obligations," Fogarty said Wednesday in his home office. "At my age, when I go out of here, I don't want to owe anyone a dime."

In May 1946, while his black 1935 Ford coupe was parked outside a Norfolk, Va., movie theater, Fogarty received a parking ticket. He bought a $1 money order to pay the fine. But soon afterward, he was discharged from the Navy, and somehow forgot that the money order was in his wallet.

About a month ago, as he was looking through a box of collectibles from his Navy days, Fogarty discovered a three-fold leather wallet that first belonged to his younger brother. Fogarty carried the wallet after his brother, Edward, was killed in 1944 while fighting the Germans in Italy.

The wallet still had the impression of the jump wing insignia his brother pinned inside and a picture of Jesus. The $1 money order was tucked in one of the folds.

Fogarty penned a letter to the Norfolk police and enclosed his debt. The money order was dated May 14, 1946.
"So belatedly I am enclosing the Money Order," Fogarty wrote. "I hope you will forgive me the long delay in sending it to you."

Sixty years ago, violators paid tickets on the honor system, said Norfolk police Officer Chris Amos. There was no way to track who was issued a ticket.

Fogarty's money order will not be cashed, Amos said. Instead, it was sent to the Police Department's museum, where it will be framed and displayed.

"It's one of those restoring your faith in mankind things," Amos said.
The recent discovery has made Fogarty, a father of two, a debt-free man again. The find also brought to attention a family heirloom, the wallet.

"I'm passing it on to my son with my other mementos," he said.

Here is the original Link: http://www.sptimes.com/2006/08/10/Northpinellas/1_and_debt_free.shtml

Is Compelling Work Really Better than Great Comp?

I read an article recently from Dialog NewsEdge about compelling work being more critical to job satisfaction than comp. In fact, I see a lot of these articles and see several potential pitfalls in taking this information at face value. The article says that Lawyers were asked which areas provide the greatest job satisfaction and they ranked challenging assignments at 42%, Comp at 22%, relationships at 20% and so on…

The challenge I have with this is that they assume a person’s decision making is linear—which it’s not. If it were linear, and challenging work ranked first, then theoretically you could ONLY offer challenging work and NOT offer any pay and people would do it. These surveys are linear in nature. They should ask a series of questions about rewarding/challenging work and level of pay that would keep them there for each increase or decrease in the level of excitement factor of the work. So, I would do a survey that looked like this….

Please Rank in order of interest which career you would most likely be attracted to: (0 being least important or 5 being most important)

The most exciting work in the world and NO pay
0 1 2 3 4 5

Very exciting work and 20K per year
0 1 2 3 4 5

Etc……

I would of course word these differently but you would eventually get to where the threshold was. Then you would have better understanding of what the trade off is instead of just knowing that people want exciting work before they think about pay—you would have the correlation between exciting work and pay. From the survey below it assumes that comp plays into 22% of a person’s decision to take a job (ASSUMES). BUT—a lot of people might say that It’s 100% of the job first, then it’s 80% comp between all of the most exciting jobs. This is the information that will give an organization competitive advantage if you ask me. It also takes into account that human decision making is not typically linear.

Ahh--The Air Smells So Good!

Wow! It’s been a recruiting roller coaster over here, hence why I haven’t written for a while. My current role is to lead staffing for one of our largest teams. We are a 650 person company so a lead role is a very hands on role. It includes strategizing, managing and executing. There is never a boring moment and it’s a constant dichotomy of balancing the longer term view with the tactical execution. There are big, big expectations for a recruiter in a professional services firm. You have billable hour employees so when we bring in new business we lose money until we can staff those accounts—so there is a lot of pressure. It’s also a business that changes directions constantly so even the best predictive models lag the pace of change. Given the unpredictability I always fall back on the basics—and every GOOD recruiter knows what this is. It’s not the job boards, not the networking tools or your ATS—it’s the ability to pick up the phone, make the connection, assess and close on an offer. I have done quite a bit of interviewing for my own team recently and it’s pretty amazing how many recruiters out there aren’t learning these basics. It’s not always their fault either. There are a lot of companies that still don’t understand why this is important and rely only on the mass advertising tools or completely rely on search firms. I’m not complaining though—for those of us that do still value the basics we are able to bring an added layer to the organization that makes our firms more competitive and better poised for success in the future. That’s job security if I have ever seen it. Okay—so, as you can see, this is what happens to a recruiter that gets stuck in the trenches and finally has a chance to come up for some air. The craziness of it all tends to make us rant about nothing at all….so there you go.

Oh—and before I forget. One of our own agency superstars just transformed his internal blog into a public blog. Frank Shaw leads the Microsoft PR account—he is a very interesting fella—check out glass house if you get a chance: Glass House

Show Up!

The ERExpo this year was energizing! It seems that more and more organizations are adopting practices that have been a direct result of the presentations from these events over the past several years. I’ve always been amazed at how many poor recruiting practices exist. I spoke to many attendees this year who are really starting to raise the bar in our profession. For those of you that read my blog and have not attended an ERExpo you need to. I’m convinced that many of the best recruiters in the industry attend this event. One of the other observations I’ve made is that business leaders (in general) understand the importance of talent. You may say—duh, of course, but I don’t think our business leaders understood talent in way they should—they see it as imperative for survival now. I also believe this is a result of recruiting and HR professionals putting meaningful information in front of them. This is an exciting time in the history of recruiting because more eyes, from the world’s top business leaders, will be on us. We will be looked at to help business succeed and will be held in the same regard as other business leaders if we do our job well. If you are not attending events like this, connecting with leaders in the industry and learning you will put yourself at a major disadvantage. I will be writing more about some of the highlights from this years event. Stay Tuned!

One Small Innovation One Giant Leap for Blogs

I just finished reading a white paper about blogs written by one of our online/new media experts. One of the things that caught my attention was the rate of adoption versus the earlier personal website/html development. This really got me thinking about innovation and how small conceptual differences can have profound impact on the adoption of the technology.

I developed my first website back in 1994. Many of you who built personal websites then probably remember the process. You of course needed an ISP that gave you some space on their servers to host your site. Then you needed an FTP program to get your HTML from your computer to their server. Then you needed to develop the HTML. If you were like me you found sites you thought were cool and then you would view the source, copy the code and rewrite it to fit your style. Then you would upload this one page and one picture at a time. After you updated the code you would then go to your URL and see how it looked. If it looked good you would keep it. If it didn’t you would update the code, delete the old page from the server and upload the new code. One can only imagine why the masses didn’t adopt this process.

Now—let’s move to 2005. You sign into one of many sites that host blogs. You sign-up; this takes five minutes. Then you choose your blog template and layout. Then you click “post an entry”, write your blog and then you are published, searchable, and can be instantly viewed by millions connected through social networks. Someone basically took the process of 94 and simplified it. The technology change is pretty subtle when you think about it but the impact is huge! Remember Windows 95 when Microsoft said DOS will become invisible? What consumer wants to mess around with DOS? They just want to turn on their computer and have it do what it is supposed to. Like with blogs this subtle difference made the Windows 95 launch one of the most significant Windows launches in history.

I do believe there has to be one other component that makes adoption complete. There seems to have to be a voice behind the innovation so consumers can accept it. There were probably thousands of people back in 94 that said, “hey, I can easily simplify this process.” I bet there were many developers that did; however, their inventions probably didn’t get much further than their 250MHZ IBM’s. If there was a powerful voice behind these inventions then the leap may have happened sooner. The voice can be viral—a zeitgeist if you will. Or the voice can be driven by PR/Marketing/Advertising.

When I write about recruiting technologies I often hear from representatives from recruitment technology firms that say, “I hear you—but check out what we did.” To be honest, I’m still waiting for that small innovation and giant leap. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen some great evolutions in the past few years. I just haven’t seen the giant leap yet. What will this look like for me? When I can come into the office and know that every candidate who comes into contact with my company has a great experience whether I talk to them or not—my ATS works as fast as I can click a button, total integration and total simplification. Is this a lot to ask or a pipe dream—NO! We shouldn’t settle for anything less.

Like with blogs I believe we are in store for one small innovation and one giant leap for recruiting technology. Listening to the many recruitment tools vendors at this years ERExpo I believe we are close. The vendors understand the business problem so now the question is can they achieve the “duh factor.” When they make that small innovation that creates the tipping point people will say, “duh, I should have thought of that.”

The Luxurious West Tower

I just arrived at the 2006 San Diego Electronic Recruiting Exchange conference. This is my first official (live) blog update on the ground at ERE Expo. I missed the 2005 conference but did attend the 2004 expo which took place at Lowes Coronado on Coronado Island. This year the conference takes place at Sheraton San Diego.

When I got out of the airport I jumped in a cab and asked if he took credit cards—he did, but when I gave him the address he pointed to the hotel across the street from his window and said he wouldn’t take a credit card for a four dollar ride. I was a little embarrassed that I could have practically walked there but being lazy I stuck with the cab instead of jumping in a shuttle. So I arrive at the Sheraton, and while it’s not the Coronado, it seems nice. There is a big beautiful fish tank the lobby, internet area, nice restaurants and relatively swanky décor. I check in at the front desk person says “your in the west tower.” I think—that’s fine by me. Okay—anybody that’s staying in the west tower knows where I’m going with this.

I walk out the back door, past the nice fountain and beautiful pool and notice another Sheraton that looks like it’s across the Bay—I just thought, oh, that must be another Sheraton all together. Then I continue to walk down the side walk, around a bend, past a little shack, and then proceed to go to what looks like a Sheraton power station. Nope—that’s the luxurious west tower. I didn’t notice a whole lot of cars in the parking lot…hmmm, a sign maybe? I proceed in past several conference rooms and I’m thinking, oh, maybe this is the wrong place. This must be the conference area when the other hotel fills up. Uh, No—this is the hotel. So I ride up in the elevator that looks a bit worn, little chipped and smelling like bourbon and half smoked cigars. The room actually turned out to be okay—and hey, they have broadband.

At the end of the day does any of this really matter? Not one bit! I’m just psyched to be in San Diego and hanging with some of the best and the brightest in the industry. I’m looking forward to seeing you all!

Lies, Smarts or Just Plain Tact?

I had an interesting conversation with our new Worldwide Talent Acquisition Leader. We were talking about influentials in the recruiting space and the dialogue that has occurred in the online space regarding ethics around headhunting and guerrilla recruiting. My inclination has always been to lean in favor of a more, let’s say, aggressive approach to finding and hiring the best talent. I have no problem calling a candidate from a competing firm and offering them an opportunity to explore a career with Waggener Edstrom Worldwide. Companies do not own employees and if another firm offers a career opportunity that is a better match than so be it. I don’t think she disagreed with this but she did provide an interesting point of view to consider regarding guerrilla recruiting tactics—and it really made me think that there is a lot more at stake then ethics……let me explain…

Her example involved a very large retailer, and a competing firm. This large retailer had employees attending a conference in Las Vegas. The other retailer was also attending the conference and had employees staying at a hotel across the street. Here’s where it gets juicy! The competing retailer had their recruiters wear shirts with branding used to recruit employees from her company. The kicker is that they entered the hotel and mingled in the area where her company’s employees were staying. She asked me if I thought this was unethical. I thought about it for a moment and I couldn’t find an ethical dilemma with this. BUT….I did see a dilemma….

The dilemma for me was that this technique lacks tact. This is an important distinction. If you are only looking at ethics as a filter for your approach you may overlook this. She didn’t disagree with being smart and strategic about how we source candidates; however, she did have a very good point that some of the tactics being suggested out there should come with a warning label. She’s right. An organizations recruiting brand should be kept sacred. What does a tactic like this do to the brand? If I worked for her firm and witnessed this I would think these recruiters from the competing firm are cheesy and aggressive. This would not give me a compelling reason to want to work for the competing firm.

So next time you develop a sourcing tactic you think is smart, and you ask the question—is this ethical, also ask the question around tact. Will this approach convey a message that is consistent with your recruitment brand? How will this ultimately be perceived by our target audience?

The Good, the Bad and Supriya's View

Supriya e-mailed me in response to my blog and I found her feedback poignant and true! The point of my posting was to play a bit of a devil’s advocate. I constantly hear American media tell the story of outsourcing/jobs from a standpoint of fear. It’s always about American jobs going away and lack of educated talent in the US. I wanted to provide an added point of view or perspective around this. But for every good usually there is a bad. Supriya makes some very compelling points around the down side. I will let you read for yourself.

From: Supriya Venkat
Sent: Tuesday, February 28, 2006 12:01 PM
To: Steve FogartySubject: A comment on your blog entry

Hello Steve,

I occasionally look up your Recruiting Revolution blog (as a PR/Wagged job seeker) and just wanted to share my thoughts on your entry today ("the Emigration Zone") and your closing comment: "If we see an up swing of emigration how does this affect consumption of American products overseas. In a way we are teaching people how to consume like American’s. This may mean more jobs in the grand scheme of things."

I'm originally from India but came to the U.S in the very late 80s to go to grad school. I get the opportunity to go back to India frequently to visit family and I must say that in recent years, I've been stunned at the growing consumerism of middle-class India. A large catalyst for this phemonemon has been the surge in the "returning Indian" population with its significant disposable incomes. And while much has been made in the Western press (including Friedman in his articles about India) about how middle class India is in fact "consuming like Americans" as you state in your blog, I've been disillusioned about how little has been said in the media about the downside and serious pitfalls of "importing" America's vision of "growth" and "prosperity" to a country like India, which is still largely illiterate and a rural-based economy. Sure, a small segment of the 1 billion + population has benefited from the "boom", but try telling that to the maid who cleans my brother's home in the hi-tech mecca of Bangalore for less than $20/month! She (and her daughter) know that the only jobs at their reach --now and in the future--- are the ones they have right now. I know this observation has little to do with recruitment woes in the United States but it's just something that struck me and I thought I'd pass it along...

Happy blogging and best regards!

Supriya Venkat

Supriya—Thanks for your point of view. It’s one thing for us to discuss this from our cubicles behind our computers. It’s a whole other thing to experience it first hand! Your perspective is invaluable.

The Emigration Zone, Lefkow Style....

Lefkow posted an interesting article about America's brand and emmigration on today's ERE: ERE Article.

It would be interesting to look at where emigrants are going. I don’t mean which country but which companies? I have talked to several recruiters who have mentioned an increased number of immigrants who want to work for an organization that will give them the option to work in their home countries in the future. I also still notice a large number of people interested in immigrating to the US. I think there are several simultaneous forces affecting the perception of what’s happening with immigration/emigration. Here are a few more things to think about with regard to this subject….

• We ran out of H1B’s a few months into this year and congress is working to approve more. This to me means that immigration is still running strong
• I don’t have the numbers in front of me but I would suspect that H1B’s increased significantly with the advent of the technology boom in the early 80’s
• My guess is that we are starting to see a cycle occur—as H1B status ends US trained immigrants head back—but I believe many of them stay working for multinational organizations—in some cases it’s the same company they worked for while in the US
• US companies now have a US trained person working in their home country which helps create better relationships/synergies with their overseas operations
• US companies also get the caliber of a US trained individual for lower labor costs (If we are talking about China/India etc)—but they are being paid a premium in their home country because they are more valuable to the multi-national; the emigrant now has a better standard of living in their home country

I agree that Dave’s article is good and makes you think. It also makes me wonder how this really positions America in the global economy. If we see an up swing of emigration how does this affect consumption of American products overseas. In a way we are teaching people how to consume like American’s. This may mean more jobs in the grand scheme of things.

SHOUT IT OUT! WE Named Best Large Agency to Work For!

I get asked what keeps me at Waggener Edstrom by about 90% of the candidates I interview. Below is an e-mail our CEO sent out to our employees last week. This is what keeps me here.

From: Melissa Waggener Zorkin
Sent: Monday, February 20, 2006 10:48 AM
To: WAGGENER EDSTROM
Subject: SHOUT IT OUT! WE Named Best Large Agency to Work For!

Out of ALL the agencies who participate in the (U.S). Holmes survey, WE had the strongest voice. With more than 400 people responding, we outdistanced all other large agencies in our responsiveness and expression about our work. YOU SAID THAT WE IS A GREAT PLACE TO WORK AND YOU SAID IT LOUD AND CLEAR – SO THE #1 HONOR AGAIN BELONGS TO…WE.

“Opportunity. The opportunity for advancement,
the opportunity to work with some of the smartest people around,
the opportunity to learn and grow and the opportunity to make a difference.”
– WE employee, November 2005

When I reached out to over half of the agency last Fall, you said to me that the #1 reason you come to work is the opportunity to make a positive difference. Today you can feel proud because your voice and contribution have definitely made a difference.

Waggener Edstrom Worldwide has this year been ranked No. 1 Best Large Agency to Work For in the (U.S.) Holmes Report’s Best Place to Work survey. That means we have received a top rating in two of the last three years – a significant accomplishment and a great source of pride. This award affirms how far you have helped us come in creating the culture we want at Waggener Edstrom Worldwide. This ranking also gives us a competitive edge in recruiting new talent, marketing our services and attracting new business.

I am not blind to the fact that you also gave ample input on how we can improve, and believe me that input is taken very seriously. We already have a number of new programs (inspired by your input in the last 4 months) that we MUST get into everyone’s hands NOW, and you will hear more about those later this week and at the Agency Business Meetings. From the many voices who took part in this survey, it’s clear that we are a company that likes to BETTER OUR OWN BEST!!

But it’s important to stop along the path to greatness to reflect on just how far we’ve come. And that is what I am asking you to do today – maybe even for this week J!

We the Killers of Innovation

What kills innovation? When I think about true innovation I think about the things that truly change the way I view the world and my work. When a friend of the family showed me that he could write code to develop games for the Commodore 64 it mesmerized me. I never knew a regular person could understand dots and dashes in a way to create something logical and stimulating for a human being. This was the first glimpse I had into what was about to occur. It was innovation self aware.

I grew up around computers. My father worked for a technology company and used to bring home the first small mainframes. I would actually work on a dummy terminal set up in an office in our house. The printer on this thing made the house shake—seriously! But it wasn’t until college that I saw the next significant leap in technology—turning the world wide web into a graphical environment. I played around with the web prior to this but it wasn’t that stimulating. You could find information but most of it was geeky and for a college student not that exciting. Mosaic changed this. A friend of mine showed me a browser that allowed me to see pictures on the web. This was the most amazing thing I had ever seen. Okay, I’m known for being dramatic—but at the time it was truly amazing to me! I don’t think any of us realized what this meant or how it was going to change the us.

The next big leap for me is when DOS went away. I worked on Windows 3.2. I tried to stay away from DOS as much as I could but there were times I was forced to get in there to do certain things. I was also using a Mac at school and preferred this environment over Windows 3.2. Then Windows 95 was about to be released and I knew DOS would go away. I remember arguing with a computer geek I worked with who thought I was crazy when I said no common person would ever use DOS again. She thought I was an idiot. Long story short, I was right. Who would want to use DOS? If technology isn’t making things easier than what’s the point? Mac lost massive market share and I became an avid Windows user—along with millions of people around the globe.

What now—Google? Search? Yes, this is part of it but I’m not sure this is the end all. Google Earth is probably one of the most impressive things I’ve seen recently. It’s not perfected yet but it’s taking the web and adding a whole new dimension to it. This is significant. I’m not going to go into a seven page rant on why this is significant but it is. You will see. This is my next prediction and I’m sure I’ll hear people tell me I’m an idiot—but who cares. I won’t even say I told you so—it’s just my opinion. For the most part the web is two dimensional right now. Google Earth is making it multidimensional. We all know search is the hot topic right now and we know why—because information is power, there is a lot of information, and search helps us find the information we need to have power. Google Earth allows us to see this information in a way that is more human than it has ever been. Okay—that’s all I’m going to say about this.

So, what kills innovation? How many of you have asked your ATS vendor to customize their product? Why?...because you need it to play well with your internal bureaucratic created processes? Right? If it was truly innovative would you need to customize it to work for all of your processes? Probably not! If it was truly innovative wouldn’t it just work? Wouldn’t it just make your work better, faster, more efficient? We kill innovation when innovation truly doesn’t exist. The recruiting tools industry hasn’t really been that innovative. Right now most recruiting tools are based on a database with recruiting steroids. That’s it! There are innovators out there and I know who they are. They may not be innovative in every part of their business but they are innovating. The ATS space has been underwhelming to say the least. The entire industry has been. If you dropped your ATS tomorrow and used Outlook would life really be that different? REALLY?? REALLY, REALLY? Do you think you could create a system without it and keep your time to fill and quality of hire the same or better? I would put money on it that you could.

So what the heck is my point here? Three things!

1. When innovation truly doesn’t exist we ask vendors to customize the heck out of it to fit our crummy processes. We kill anything that they developed that is unique because it wasn’t innovative to begin with.
2. Innovation doesn’t come often—but you know when it does. Don’t confuse design for innovation.
3. Never underestimate crazy ideas. Whenever someone is running an idea by me that I think is crazy I always stop myself and think twice about it. It may be the next greatest thing. Don’t underestimate the power of dreamers.

We kill innovation because we spend money on things that aren’t innovative. We also criticize ideas that we think are crazy. Take a look at what your recruiting team spends money on and ask yourself what would happen tomorrow if it was gone. What else COULD you be spending money on? What would happen if you took the most obscure idea you heard this year and actually tried it? What would happen? What would really happen? I know, some bureaucrat would probably complain and it would feel like the end of the world. But what would really happen……..

Jobster Advisory Born

I’m a firm believer that relationships that start off controversial can lead into some of the strongest. This is the way I feel about Jobster. When Jobster was in its early stages, about a year and a half ago, I heard rumor of them from some of my colleagues in the industry. I knew that there were a few organizations working with them on a pilot program and I knew it had something to do with a referral network. Other than this I didn’t know much else about them.

I then started to receive e-mails from Jobster. They were personalized mails signed by the CEO himself, Jason Goldberg. The Senior Vice President of my team received one, our President received one and I received one. The mail basically said that this is a new innovative way to build your talent network and we would love to tell you more. When we replied to this mail we got nothing back. This was frustrating, especially since our President specifically asked me to see what Jobster was all about. I went onto their website to learn more. I immediately felt a connection with their brand (from a look and feel), however, it was still confusing to me what they did. I got the fact that their tool was about networking with the right candidates but it was hard to figure out how it actually worked. Finally, out of frustration, I put up a blog entry about my experience with them. This was the first time I saw some light at the end of the tunnel.

Miraculously, the chief Jobster himself, Jason Goldberg, read my blog and sent an e-mail to me. He basically said anytime you are ready to know more about what we do, bring it on. This immediately impressed me about the organization. It was the first step in changing my perception and my experience up to this point with them. I told Jason to sign me up—I wanted to know more. He sent Heather Grey out—one of his top sales executives, to show us the product. After my meeting with Heather my perception of them had gone full circle. I hadn’t used the product yet but I knew that I would. There were several things that jumped out at me. They were hiring smart people, they understood the power of a brand, they care about their customers, they are in it because they are passionate about it and they are innovating.

Then we tried the product. Our start was slow. We had to manually enter the contacts into Jobster, enter in our job advertisements and then manage the leads that came in with minimal information about them. It was something new and with anything new it takes some pain to get to where we needed to go with this. This was several months ago. We just ran our latest account executive and senior account executive campaign and the light bulb finally went on. We made contact with several great people. One of them is in Hong Kong and the other in Seattle. These are the type of people that I definitely want to talk to. We haven’t made a hire yet but we are in interviews with candidates from Jobster and I have no doubt that we will make our first hire very soon—and they will be strong hires. If I look at what I invested in the product so far, even if I make two hires this year, it will pay for it. And this is just the beginning. The product is starting to gain momentum.

So where are we now? They value the customer’s voice and they invite controversy. They truly feel this is the essence of what will allow them to become better. So they invited several recruiting professionals up to Seattle to listen about what they can do better and what they are doing well now. This is something I value about them. They brought me up to Seattle and did a lot of listening. I also had the honor to sit in the room with other top recruiting professionals from Nike, Starbucks, EDS, MITRE among others. We had the opportunity to meet their people. Later on we went to Wild Ginger and got to know each other on a more personal level. Over dinner I had the pleasure of talking with John Atkins, lead Product Manager, and Ethan Lowry, Vice President of Product Design. In addition to almost figuring out the future of all innovation I learned how to get all the food to our end of the table. Ethan also taught me how to accidentally lose a glass of merlot and miraculously end up with some top notch Pinot from Oregon—one of Goldberg’s favorites. The night ended with Heather Grey and me chasing a mini-van through the rain. All in all it was a great experience. The Jobster team realizes there is still a lot of work to be done but they are listening to their customers and they are thinking about the right things. They have the building blocks for something great. Thanks for the experience Jobster!

King of Connections

We just launched our new Waggener Edstrom Worldwide brand. This is exciting news especially for those of us on the Staffing team. Our new career site features employee vignettes, accolades, cultural anecdotes, career paths, and, of course, our job listings. If you get a chance check it out: http://www.waggeneredstrom.com/

I had the honor of conducting the interview for our featured employee vignette. I included this below. This is from one of our PR pros on our T-Mobile team—Jackson Jeyanayagam.

THE WE IN WAGGENER EDSTROM:

King of Connections

Jackson Jeyanayagam is well-connected. Whether sharing ideas
with co-workers, chatting with editors at Glamour and Maxim, promoting
after-hours parties, or reaching out to the broader world, Jackson enjoys
building relationships as part of his job. He is in the know and on the go.

A senior account executive at Waggener Edstrom Worldwide,
Jackson works with wireless service provider T-Mobile USA. He helped launch the
wireless industry’s first nationwide service to play ”ring-back tones,” real
songs that callers hear when calling a mobile phone. Jackson also manages
celebrity product placements for the fashionable T-Mobile Sidekick II product.

”I like the WE culture. It’s an open environment and I have
lots of good friends here,” he says. “There is an entrepreneurial spirit here,
so you can carve your own way. There are so many things you can get involved in
from staying connected with colleagues and clients to giving back to the global
community. Where else would I get to do this?”

Staying current on what’s considered hot among consumers.
Working the phones. Contributing to corporate giving efforts. Getting paid to
read Gear, Spin and Details and watch MTV’s "Total Request Live.” Hooking up
hip, young celebrities and fashionistas with the latest mobile data devices.
It’s all in a day's work for Jackson, and the connection - even friendship -
with colleagues and consumers makes it more worthwhile.

VALUING VOICES:

“I speak my opinion and people listen to me. The agency is
shaping its vision and I feel I get to give input,” Jackson says. “When I have a
meeting with executives who ask my opinion, that means a lot to me. Everyone
here has a say and you can make a difference.”

Visual Mapping

I had the fortunate opportunity to hire an individual that wrote her dissertation on clustering blogs based on market demographics. She is originally from Hong Kong where she was a journalist and public relations practitioner before coming to the US to obtain her PhD. She recently turned me onto a blog that focuses on visual mapping. I have included the link below; I believe this work WILL have an impact on recruiting.

Visual Mapping Site: http://infosthetics.com/

Two of their maps really jumped out at me--the first was the map that showed the overlap and differences between search engines. It’s actually a map that they pulled off of www.dogpile.com. What’s interesting about this is that when we are thinking about search optimization we need to be thinking about multiple sites. It also made me think that aggregate sites don’t win out over well branded sites. This has implications for what they are calling “vertical search“. You would think a user would use a vertical search site for the convenience of having all of their jobs in one place. If this were true users would use Dogpile more than they would use Google. Google’s brand far outweighs Dogpile’s so it’s just not the case. Dogpile is also symbiotic of the other sites--if they didn’t exist Dogpile would cease to exist as it’s currently known.

The second and more interesting post was mapping around social networking. This is very exciting work. This will most likely be the future of social networking where you can actually see how your connections visually. Jobster is doing some of this now but it’s not as advanced as what’s shown on infostetics. This concept really makes sense to me because when you think about relationships they are not linear--they are multidimensional. Let me give you an example of this:

You have a co-worker that works in recruiting. She owns a piece of the pie and
you own a piece of the pie and your day to day responsibilities are to service
those clients and fill roles. Your relationship with her is as peers in this
instance. Your co-worker also owns college recruitment and you support her on
initiatives that she is driving. Your relationship with her here is as your
project lead. You also know her husband and go out for drinks with them on
occasion. Your relationship with her here is as a friend. Some relationships can
obviously be very complex but I think this demonstrates that relationships are
not linear.

They also show how this same concept can be used in e-mail. Furthermore, David Lefkow also had a post recently mentioning how cool Google Earth is. This is another example of visually mapping search. All of this research will have implications for how we recruit--the web is becoming more and more multidimensional than it has ever been.

It’s RAD!

Cybersleuthing & Digibility

I just came across two very interesting blogs. This first is Digibility authored by Jim Stroud and the second is Cybersleuthing by Shally Steckerl. Both of these authors are Microsoft employees. If you want to be top of your game in on-line recruitment then you should check these guys out--especially Shally Steckerl--a lead researcher at MS.

If you want to simplify the business world into three main categories from the context of innovation here it is:

• There are those that innovate--changing the way we work in live with their inventions; they are rapidly changing the marketplace
• There are those that react to this; they try to catch up and make sense of the change around them
• There are those that ignore the change; they don’t want to believe things are changing around them and do nothing to keep up with the advances

The on-line recruiting world is changing. Search is more relevant than it has ever been and search optimization is critical. If you don’t understand this or don’t know what this is you should. Shally and Jim are a good place to start. If you are completely unfamiliar with this subject then some of their postings may be confusing. Shally in particular can be a bit daunting.

Regardless, check out their posts and start asking about search optimization for your recruitment site and job postings if you aren’t doing this already. Both of their sites are included below:

The Digability Blog http://digability.blogspot.com
The Cybersleuthing Blog http://www.erexchange.com/blogs/CyberSleuthing/