Forces in Play: Everyone is available all the time, waiting for the next opportunity to come along and capture his or her attention. The Web is the recruiting weapon of choice.
After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, the travel industry went through a period of plummeting performance. Airlines, cruise ships, and other recreation industries began laying off hordes of workers to stem their hemorrhaging cash flows. During this period, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines took an unusual and strategic approach—the company intensified its efforts to build relationships with candidates over the Internet. Why did Royal Caribbean begin recruiting while simultaneously laying off people?
The answer is simple logic. Knowing that companies across the industry, including Royal Caribbean itself, were laying people off, Royal Caribbean officials decided to send these newly unemployed professionals a simple message: We cannot hire you today, but we want to know you, because there will be a time when we will be hiring again.
Royal Caribbean transformed the rapid downturn into a competitive opportunity. The company put the processes in place so that when the industry began to recover, they would already have a handle on whom they wanted to hire, be in open communication with those people, and therefore be able to deploy a new talent force faster and more effectively than their competitors, putting them in a stronger position to quickly exploit the upturn.
Royal Caribbean understood that Q-Talent is always hard to get. Rather than sit back and then react when the economy improved, Royal Caribbean was proactive. Their talent organization used the company's Web site to increase its reach. They developed a private, virtual “talent community,” which soon included tens of thousands of people all over the world. They encouraged former employees as well as others in the industry to join the online community so that the company could keep in touch with them. The ensuing communications were honest, forthright, and mutually beneficial.
When the time came, the company was well ahead of their talent demand—and the competition. When the cruise industry began to recover, Royal Caribbean had direct relationships with a huge pool of qualified and available talent. The company was able to hire at a faster rate and gear up to capacity much more quickly than it would have without its strategic efforts, giving it a tremendous competitive advantage. Even more impressive, the company accomplished this while decreasing its utilization of talent agencies by 90 percent, saving millions of dollars in the process.
This is just one example where a strategic talent organization, aligned with business objectives, used technology and great messaging to bring tremendous value to the company—not only in terms of the size of its available pool of talent and the rate at which it could bring quality people aboard when necessary, but also in terms of what it contributed directly to the bottom line.
By now, you have developed a talent organization that is closely aligned with the business and poised to deliver business value. You have reached out and partnered with your company's best marketing minds to create a talent brand and accompanying talent-specific messages. You are starting to see a return on those efforts as your messages bring new talent “window shopping” through your employment-related Web pages.
What do you know about these “window shoppers?” These are people who have become interested in your company and stopped by to take a virtual look. Perhaps they are responding directly to one of your messages. Regardless of how they found you, there is value, intrigue, and opportunity in the mere fact that these people have come to your Web site and looked for job openings and other information about your company.
Each visitor responded in some way to your company's employment brand image. Many of these visitors likely share work interests and employment philosophies. They all have the most important thing in common—they want to work for you. This is a community of common interest. It is a community of potential talent and also of potential shareholders, customers, and evangelists. It is a community of potential value in more ways than one. As you will see in this chapter, a talent community is a new resource that your organization can utilize in flexible and creative ways to solve myriad business challenges.
So, what are you going to do with it?
You are going to acknowledge it, build it, and nurture it. You are going to fold it into your talent plan, formulate goals around it, and measure it. Like all relationships, interacting with your talent community is not a one-time event or a one-way street, but rather an ongoing process involving give-and-take. As with any professional relationship, to foster mutual respect and sow the seeds of a long-term, mutually beneficial partnership, you need to be smart, strategic, and—most of all—gracious in how you approach your talent community.
Clearly, this is a new type of relationship that goes beyond the realm of traditional HR, where you are working to manage your employees. Now you have got to think about relating to the individuals in your talent community as current talent, alumni, customers, business partners, and of course, that all-important prospective Q-Talent.
The talent spin cycle is a continual process of collecting new talent prospects, forming relationships with them, and either qualifying them for delivery into the organization or maintaining the relationships over time so that you can consider them for future opportunities.
For companies that want to stay ahead, engaging with their talent community is a never-ending process. The “talent spin” is a cycle of continually updating your Web site and “pushing” your messages online and offline to attract, or “pull,” new talent to your site. In the Collect phase of this cycle, your Web site is truly like the spider's web. Although you will not be devouring your talent for breakfast, you do want to make the experience on your site “sticky” enough that more visitors will be compelled to stay for awhile.
What happens when potential talent submits a resume on your careers site? Giving you the benefit of the doubt, we will assume your system automatically e-mails the person an acknowledgment. This e-mail is the first direct communication your company has with that talent. Does it say, “Welcome to our talent community”? Or does it say, “We will call you if something comes up”? Does it reaffirm the company's brand? If you are not sending a reply at all, what does that say about your organization and what it might be like to work there?
If your employment Web site leads to a one-way resumé-submittal page or visitor profile page, it might not matter what you say. Typically, these types of pages ask for personal information, ostensibly to be stored and accessed later. Only active job seekers will take the time to fill out these forms. These people are usually either unemployed or unhappy in their current situation. They might be great talent, but active job seekers represent, at most, 20 percent of your available talent pool. And even within that 20 percent, most are only looking out of curiosity. They simply want information they can use, think about, and dream about before making a major life change.
As a result, companies with straightforward resumé-submittal pages find that as many as 98 percent of visitors to that page “back out” without submitting anything. Most never return. Their reasons vary. Maybe they have had a good job for five years and do not have a current resumé. Maybe they just wanted to learn about jobs at your company to find out whether it is a good fit before actually applying for one. Maybe they just do not want to give you their phone number over the Internet.
Are these the kinds of people you want to be turning away?
The bottom line is, a 2 percent return means that you are losing the opportunity to engage 98 out of every 100 people who visit your Web site. What if you were a retailer or a restaurant and 98 percent of the people who came through your door never bought anything? Companies should expect a much higher rate of success from their Web recruitment efforts. How does a 20 percent rate of return sound? 30 percent? If 1,000 people visit the site, that is the difference between 200 and 300. Think you might have a better chance of finding that next superstar if you can choose from 100 more people with the same amount of effort? For large companies, those numbers could be much higher.
In the virtual world, your lobby can hold thousands of people without violating any fire codes. Web technology enables companies to communicate and build relationships with thousands of people located all over the world. So instead of throwing up roadblocks, such as, “Give me a current resumé,” why not simply invite them in? Attracting and communicating with talent online does not necessarily take a big investment as much as a change in philosophy. Being gracious, respectful, and, most of all, responsive to the people who visit your site will go a long way. Being targeted, strategic, and honest with your messages will take you even further.
Today's interactive technology can provide an experience that is much more like traditional recruitment—ask prospects about their interests, match positions to those interests, e-mail prospects data that is interesting enough to get them to take the next step in the process. Online, this interaction can lead to a valuable relationship without requiring candidates to give you their name, address, or other personal information.
To maximize this collection phase, ask for as little as possible. Make the “cost of entry” as low as you can. It is all about the candidate at this point. Offer them some value (for example, information, a discount, an upgrade, or a coupon). Give them the option to remain anonymous. Let them know your philosophy regarding their potential relationship with your organization, the choices they have for engaging with you, and how you honor and protect them by letting them choose to give you information when they want. Some of this information will be contained in the privacy policy you should link to from each page on your site, but you should also articulate the value of the relationship more prominently in concise, simple language. If you offer them something, follow through immediately, at least with an e-mail confirmation.
The site should explain the value that the organization places on great talent and how, because of that priority, you want to know them. You want to know what they do, and what they are dreaming about doing. And you want to stay in touch. You do not need their phone number, you do not need to know where they live. All you need is an e-mail address. If you can obtain someone's anonymous, non-work–related e-mail address and then use it to communicate respectfully and graciously with the person, you are on your way to establishing a successful, long-term relationship with that person.
This kind of open approach, requiring a low investment by the candidate, is the key to attracting any potential candidate, including a passive one. Remember, the passive candidate is an oxymoron used to describe the person who is not technically “looking,”but who might become interested in an opportunity if his or her attention is piqued. These prospective candidates are typically wary and desire a high degree of anonymity, which in turn requires trust. Therefore, to be successful, your Web site's content and interactions need to provide a way for persons to engage with you on their terms, slowly, in a way that makes them comfortable and willing to return to your site again.
Asked for as little as their first name, e-mail address, and areas of interest, visitors to your employment pages are more likely to spend the required 60 seconds—or less—to give you this information. After that short, quick, easy registration has been submitted, you have just captured a talent relationship. If your Web site copy and processes are working correctly, you will soon find yourself with an ever-growing community of talent that you can begin to nurture for the long term.
With this resource, you do not necessarily have to run a newspaper ad every time your organization has a new job opening. You do not have to comb through dozens, even hundreds, of resumés when you need to fill a position. You do not have to reinvent the wheel every time you want to hire someone. You can now begin to meet your talent needs by reaching out to your talent community, potential candidates who have shown a sincere interest in your company.
Over time, you can begin to find out more about each participant. For example, your communications can become more targeted with candidates who select high-demand skill areas during registration or in subsequent communications, or who demonstrate other interesting skills during their participation in your talent community.
In the meantime, stay in touch with these folks regularly, but not too frequently. You want your talent looking forward to your communications. Some companies use a two-month cycle, communicating general information to the entire talent community three times per year and sending job opportunities and other more targeted content to high-value candidates an additional three times per year. Or, as part of registration, allow people to indicate how often they would like to hear from you.
Your communications should continue to provide something of value, be it an entertaining read, useful information, special offers, or something else. You have to provide value first to gain value down the line. You might send messages from the CEO, company news, or other company-specific updates such as upcoming product launches, special events, or sales.
Every communication to your talent community should contain a value statement about talent. You do not necessarily need to come right out and say, “We value talent,” but rather highlight the company's benefits, commitment to workers, and any best-place-to-work awards or other evidence of that commitment.
As job opportunities open up, e-mail them to specific participants in your talent community who might be interested and include links back to the company's site. When candidates click the link that you provide in your e-mail, it should automatically take them to a Web page that asks specific questions about their qualifications while providing more information about the job in question. The next section describes these questions in more detail.
This stage is where Web recruitment offers real value and efficiency. With current Web technology, the technologist in your talent organization, described in Chapter 3, “Building a Competitive Talent Organization,” can design a front-end solution that automatically screens candidates. “Front-end solution” might sound fancy and expensive, but like most business-efficiency initiatives, it is actually a huge money-saver in terms of both actual expenditures and productivity.
For some companies, initial candidate screening is a significant expense. Think back to the product manager working 70 hours per week. Instead of asking him to screen candidates by wading through a stack of resumés, the Web site can do most of that for him. The site will deliver prescreened, prequalified talent to the product manager's desktop, along with some personal information about the candidate that he can use to start the conversation.
Your talent organization can also be a bit leaner now. If you currently utilize agency recruiting, this is a classic technology benefit story. You can transfer just about all of the initial screening activities performed by the agency to the Web site and allow the expensive contract recruiters to focus solely on delivering qualified candidates to your organization, providing an immediate return on your investment in the Web site.
Without using the Web to prescreen candidates, a large company might need to retain 50 or more external recruiters, even with state-of-the-art technology tools, just to handle the effort of qualifying and delivering talent into the organization. With contract recruiters often commanding $7,000 to $12,000 or more per month, that is an expense of $4 to $7.2 million per year, largely to perform the functions you have just automated. Using the approach previously described, most businesses will see these costs decrease significantly, even dramatically. How about reducing your outsourced recruiting headcount from 50 to 10?
What's more, those 10 recruiters, whether internal or external, will be able to bring a higher level of value to the business. It starts with the efforts described in Chapter 3. Freed from the task of initial screening, the talent organization can now work on extending its reach, both within the walls of the business and beyond them, developing and strengthening the talent strategy, brand, messages, and philosophy.
The talent organization can spend more time engaging with talent, building affinities, deepening relationships, and bringing talent from cyberspace to the workplace and possibly into one of your open positions.
This type of screening automation also has the potential to improve candidate relations. Imagine this scenario: A high-level technical job opening is automatically published to your company's Web site at 11:50 p.m. A great candidate happens to be online, working late, and receives an automated e-mail about it. He thinks, what the heck, clicks the link in the e-mail, answers the questions on your Web site, and submits the requested information at 12:15 a.m. He passes the initial automated screening process and, as the next step in the process, the system automatically forwards his information to the hiring manager, who is still online after submitting the job less than half an hour ago.
That hiring manager could pick up the phone, knowing the candidate is awake, and contact him to begin a conversation based on information the candidate just provided. Or the hiring manager could immediately send the candidate a short e-mail, expressing his interest in the candidate and scheduling time to talk. Do you think that potential Q-Talent would be impressed with the hiring manager's responsiveness? How long would that process have taken, and what would it have cost, using traditional recruiting means?
Let's take a closer look at the initial screening process we have been discussing. When the candidate reaches a point where she wants to apply online for a position of interest, the company can determine whether there is a match by asking qualifying questions (QQs) online that are specific to each position. At this point in the process, if the person is serious about applying for a position, she will be willing to spend a few minutes answering some questions about her work life. Think of these questions as your “sieve”—if they do their job, all the water and sediment will fall through, and you'll be left with a few shiny gold nuggets.
The tone and format of the QQs should be carefully planned to match the attitude and culture you want to convey, while at the same time obtaining the information you need. If done right, this optional, short form will not be a stressful burden or hassle for your talent, but an interesting, maybe even fun experience that reaffirms their excitement about the opportunity to become a part of your company.
Draw in candidates with compelling, interesting questions that put forth the company's values. To do this, part of each question should contain a statement about the company's commitment to its people or why the position is critical to the company's success. For example, “We are committed to providing the best intensive care facility in the tri-state area. Do you have experience leading a talented, disciplined nursing staff in a highly demanding environment?” If it fits your talent brand, use a quirky bit of wisdom, humor, or whatever style reflects your company's culture: “Our keyboards will shock you if you type less than 60 words per minute. Can you hack it?” The statement can also underline the importance of the skill you are asking about: “We move six tons of product per day. Our people are in great shape. We need people who love exercise and can handle a fast-paced environment.”
To craft the questions, the recruiter should work with the hiring manager to hammer out the specifics about the open position. Writing effective questions requires the ability to ask compelling questions combined with an understanding of the mentality and requirements necessary to do the job. Be sure each question will uncover the type of information you need. The entire questionnaire should align with the specific business goals that the position is meant to help accomplish.
In addition to providing you with great new professionals for your organization, your talent community is an audience available to participate in creative new programs. If you understand your talent community members, their interests, activities, hopes, and dreams, you can create endless programs, initiatives, events, promotions, and strategic partnerships that provide true value to your talent community—and new returns to your business that most companies have never even considered.
For instance, in sports entertainment network ESPN's reality television show, Dream Job, contestants took a crash course in sports journalism, vying for a one-year contract with the network. How many people began to think about a career in sports journalism as a result of that show? How many visited ESPN.com to fantasize about their own dream job? Here is a community united behind a common interest—they all dream of becoming an ESPN sportscaster. As with any good talent brand, the TV show, Web site, and accompanying messages probably lead people to self-select for this dream job, distilling this audience to a reasonably focused demographic.
What other common interests might this demographic share? Imagine if ESPN took this programming a step further and began building an online community. Might other companies be interested in the potential of that community? Perhaps companies such as Calloway Golf or Nike would be interested in pursuing a sponsorship or exchanging links with this site, knowing there is a steady flow of people there who fit their target market. Could campaigns, events, or promotions be built around those participants?
These cooperative principles can work in almost any industry. A videogame development company could build a large talent community of people who enjoy playing videogames. Through special promotions, discounts, and other offers, the company could continue to deepen the relationship with each participant, return something of value to the talent community, and at the same time accomplish some of its own recruiting goals.
Perhaps the company needs to move units of a particular game to meet sales expectations or make room for new inventory. They could spur sales by offering a discount to their talent community, returning something of value to the community in the process. Perhaps they need feedback on a beta release of a new game in development. They could invite the talent community to participate in the beta, make all of the participants feel like insiders, and gain useful product data to aid with development. Along the way, they could identify participants who provide exceptional beta feedback, perhaps asking those individuals to come back and preview more new games.
In this scenario, the head of the talent organization would work in tandem with the heads of marketing, sales, product development, and other leaders to affect the number of units sold, revenue streams, product quality, and the company's stock price. Now your talent organization is no longer overhead but is returning real, measurable value to your bottom line.
Technology is a tool. Used strategically, this tool enables you to create and nurture a talent community that will provide an ongoing source of Q-Talent, strengthen your talent brand, and achieve other business results across the organization. Most people work. Most companies hire. Using the Internet to link the two is a bandwagon that everyone should be jumping on.