LG & Associates Search / Talent Strategy

"The Web Is In The Process Of Becoming A Video Medium" . . .

In reading a FastCompany.com comment by Saabira Chaudhuri today, I was stunned by the clarity of the following statement made by Walt Mossberg of the WSJ:

"The Web is in the process of becoming a video medium."

Savvy candidates and employers today are embracing Facebook, Twitter, and the usage of video by REAL employees to create demand for the employment and candidate brand.

The game is changing, so keep both eyes open on how the intersection between talent acquisition and video play out . . .

Random Recruiting Thoughts on Opt-Out Marketing, Viral Loops, a Modern-Day Consilience, and a Readiness for Growth

If I may play 'Mr. Marketing Devil's Advocate' for a moment, let me interject one of the new rules of marketing that exist within today's intersection of a globalizing economy and the viral expansion of social media:

***Drop any opt-out marketing efforts like a bad habit.***

Opt out = spam. In the words of my friend, Seth Godin, "Opt-out takes advantage of laziness, inertia, and infoglut to inundate people with stuff they don't want." There are more innovative ways than I can count on one hand for you or your firm to capture the candidate pool's attention in a meaningful way. Perhaps it's twittering highly relevant news or 'blog picks of the day' . . . or creating a viral loop/network through a targeted Ning group . . . or any other information that allows you to develop not only respect, but the 2-way dialogue that has gone forgotten in our world (i.e. we're still sucked into the CRM promise that didn't work for the Mktg & Sales function several years ago, and still has yet to yield positive ROI/EVA!)

Since I entered the Talent Acquisition world, I've been saying all along that this industry is literally dying for marketing minds. Among every business unit, we (meaning as recruiters and talent acquisition professionals) have more 'customer data' than any other . . . yet we do little to leverage it. The marketing function would salivate to have as much data and trend information as we have - in fact, they pay a hefty penny for it under the guise of '3rd party market research.' The beautiful thing here is that you don't need 10 - 20 yrs marketing experience to be great . . . you just need the desire to embrace and get to know your customer/candidate segments better. Passion and curiosity are the keys.

In the form of a shameless plug, it's the reason that magazine editors have started contacting me regarding some of my blog posts . . . while the same information falls on what can be termed 'deaf ears' in our space. That is, by no means, an indictment of any sort on Recruiting and TA; all it means or shows is that we're not ready yet . . .

We're not ready to step up our game and get off the boards, or stop mass spamming, or stop thinking that quantity of names has anything to do with QOH outcomes, or stop treating all candidate segments the same. But the time will come . . . and when it does, we'll see a modern-day Rennaissance (or better, Consilience) in our Talent Acquisition world.

Consilience: The joining together of knowledge and information across disciplines to create a unified framework of understanding.

Joshua Letourneau
Mg Director, SSF (Strategic Sourcing Framework) Implementation
LG & Assoc Search / Talent Strategy
BLOG: www.lgexec.typepad.com

Talent Acquisition Bubbles Act As Non-Permeable Membranes When It Comes To Diversity of Thought

In a somewhat interesting conversation on ERE, I've observed a trend in response to a Talent Acquisition Director seeking information on how to implement a Sourcing Process into the current mix. Fellow TA Directors seem to be extremely guarded against any non-TA thought processes or insights from 'outside-the-bubble' per se. Being a vendor in the space is met with near-immediate disqualification, which is greatly unfortunate, however not for the reasons that might immediately meet the eye.
For a disclaimer, trust me that I understand the guarding against being continuously sold. It's the same exact scenario for me as well. Every time I turn around, there's a new product, service, or solution being presented to me.

Personally, I would encourage Directors of Talent Acquisition to be careful of the exact opposite. I wrote a blog post the other day about "Blindly Worshipping At The Altar of Best Practices", and I would caution Talent Acquisition professionals against doing so.

We are in the early throws of a function that does not (yes, does not) have a seat at the executive table for a number of reasons. One of them is because there is a bias that the best and brightest do not man the TA or HR function. A portion of that stigma is due to TA professionals blindly following the 'best practice' or fad of the day, not because it stands to enhance overall organizational performance, but because it stands to improve otherwise myopic objectives (i.e. those specific to departmental performance only).

A perfect example is an overview of the demand that exists in our space for circa-1930 marketing solutions and 1950s Henry Ford assembly-line recruiting process improvement. Despite having more information about our customer segments (candidate pools, if you will) than any other business function (yes, including marketing), we continue to operate with outdated and archaic philosophies.

There is a great deal to be learned from great business minds outside solely the HR and TA functions. I would encourage all of us to read more of Malcom Gladwell, Tom Peters, Peter Drucker, Seth Godin, or anyone else that piques your curiosity.

I know some former CEOs of F500 companies and current VPs of Marketing that would absolutely blow us away with their 'outside-the-bubble' insights and observations. Please, please, keep an open mind and don't put up immediate blinders because the point of view or paradigm isn't directly from someone in HR, Talent Acquisition, or Organizational Development. Again, please keep an open mind - it's the only way to leapfrogging our current state of growing innefficiencies. We're smarter than Upper Mgmt gives us credit for . . . but it all starts with us recognizing and embracing that fact.

"Business is War"??? - Beware the Pyrrhic Victory (and Some Other Observations On Our Industry)

In doing my morning cup-of-coffee rounds through some sites and blogs I greatly respect, I came across the following HBR article by by Deepak Malhotra, Gillian Ku, and J. Keith Murnighan:

"When Winning Is Everything"

How many times do we hear the age-old mantra, 'Business is War'?  Think about that - we hear it almost all the time. It's the mindset that dominated American thinking throughout the Industrial Revolution. And if you listen closely, you'll hear this mantra among a large set of Baby Boomers in our society. As a former Marine, I can remember times where the mindset was that you were un-patriotic if you didn't want to destroy a competitor. 9/11 has changed some of these preexisting mentalities (as well as our current foreign policy), however I am always surprised to not see the same enlightenment within our industry . . .

For example, consider the following in the Talent Acquisition world - yes, Exec Recruiters should pose to maintain control, but the notion of 'control' can be a misleading one. There is more than one way to maintain control, perhaps without anyone even noticing that you do, in fact, have control. The notion of control in our industry has been permeated in such a way as to further create an "us vs. them" mentality between TPRs and HR. It's as if control is a struggle in which you either 'win' or 'lose', on or off, black or white, 0 or 1 . . .

But does this mindset serve us in a globalizing, less compartmentalized economy? No, not at all. Cirque du Soleil didn't come into existence because the founder wanted to crush the Movie Theater industry, the Traveling Circus industry, or Broadway musicals . . . the goal was to innovate in a manner that would create a new experience that would emphatically delight customers. They didn't start out by saying, "Let's crush Barnum & Bailey"! Rather, they started out with a clean slate (a blank page, if you will), and today, they rank as #22 on Interbrand's poll of brand names with the highest global impact. Also consider the evolution of the iPod (and now, iPhone). Did Apple start out by wanting to crush RIM? No, they started out by innovating outside the current set of perceived market parameters. That's what I call winning.

On my side of the fence, I run into industry professionals that think you can only exist in one of a few very narrow categories as a vendor: RPO, Contract Recruitment, or Executive Search. In attempting to innovate the model and drive better client results, we often hit a wall because we don't fit into the nice little box (or ladder) of all the other commodity vendors competing solely on price in our industry (Telephone Name Generation companies, ATS companies, Internet Research companies, etc.)

You see, 'winning' is not always about destroying the competition in a very narrow niche . . . not if you want to sustain for the long haul. The age-old "Business is War" mentality helps companies focus and perhaps win in the short term, but a Pyrrhic victory is worth nothing, especially to shareholders and investors. In our new global economy, strategic alliances and true partnerships that aim to deliver amazing value propositions are the road to winning in every sense of the word.