There isn't much doubt that LinkedIn represents a very new and powerful way of using the web for sourcing and recruiting talent. It's the first popularly successful example of connecting social networking to business for recruiting purposes and certainly it represents a sea change in how organizations view and invest in their recruiting function.
But exactly how big of a change is it?
I have heard it suggested that LinkedIn is a death knell for the job board industry. That would of course be a significant change (as well as bad news for me) but is it true?
I don't think so.
Let's first remember that employment advertising and branding, just like all advertising and branding is designed to influence decision making at purchase time. That's a process that starts well in advance of the purchase and effective advertising seeks to get messaging about product top of mind with the purchaser so that at the correct time they are more likely to consider and/or buy your specific product.
When it comes to employment advertising the goals are the same. Yes, of course posted opportunities will get applicants who are currently looking for work and just happen to see your job and apply, but there is also a process of enticing passive candidates and top talent for your business that goes beyond the number of applicants for a position.
Top talent, when looking for work is going to start by identifying the companies and positions that they want to work for. The criteria by which specific organizations will depend on the individual but in the case of diversity specifically may include questions such as the inclusiveness of the organization, opportunities for career advancement and ... You want your organization to be included in this short list of potential employers and the only way to do that is through employment branding and advertising.
Job boards allow you extensive and non-replaceable opportunities for employment advertising in several ways including the amount of exposure available. This isn't just traffic we are talking about here but very targeted traffic of people who are either actively looking for employment or at least considering a new role. The brand message on a job board and subsequent SEO are undiluted by your B2C or B2B brand messages which is key to making sure your employment brand is being seen by the target audience at a time that they are open and receptive to it.
But can't I do the same thing on LinkedIn? Surely their audience is my target and receptive to my employment branding?
Yes but like any advertising you can't just throw up an ad in one place and call it a day. You don't limit your B2C advertising to TV or print or online or billboards, instead you choose as many options as you can so that your message is seen by the largest number of your target audience as possible. In the same way that I will tell you that because TalentOyster as a diversity niche job board (with a niche audience) means that you should be using mainstream sourcing boards (like Monster) as well as and not instead of TalentOyster the same applies for job boards vs. social networking recruiting tools like LinkedIn.
If tomorrow you took all your jobs off Monster and posted them all on LinkedIn instead would you see an impact?
There would be a short-term impact, although the exact drop-off in applications would vary based on your industry and overall brand but the more significant impact would be in the longer term (6 months or more). As time went on I believe you would experience a serious drop in applicants fro top talent coupled with a lack of interest in your positions from passive candidates. Being absent from job boards means you would no longer be top of mind for candidates when it comes to planning where they want to work.
There's also the matter of who exactly is on LinkedIn. Is it a "mainstream" social network representing the non-diverse audience? It certainly seems that way. As we already know making sure that your message is being seen by everyone requires a sourcing strategy that looks beyond the mainstream.
Don't get me wrong, LinkedIn is an excellent tool for your recruiting and sourcing "toolbox". But at the end of the day it is a tool, not a one-stop solution for all of your online recruiting needs.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Thursday, April 21, 2011
What does diversity mean to you?
Seems like a simple question doesn't it? But I think the answer can tell a lot about where an organization is on the diversity scale.
It starts with the "big four" groups inherited from the legal/equity perspective, visible minorities, aboriginal, women and persons with disabilities but in most cases diversity in a company means more than that. Other groups that are often part of it may include new immigrants, LGBT and older workers. But there are even more than that.
I recently came across a definition of diversity that included occupation types! The general idea is that when we talk about “uniting in diversity” we need to be including all the different groups that make up our organization, including groups that are not obvious at first glance. And when you think about it, the concept of inclusion does mean that different business function areas in your company should be working together just as different ages, races or genders are inside each one.
So is diversity really just another word for teamwork?
Someone once said that diversity isn't about the differences between us but about the uniqueness we all share. Isn't that also a good definition of good teamwork?
Successful teamwork takes the unique skills and strengths of individual members and uses them to achieve shared objectives that wouldn't otherwise be reachable on their own. I think you can say the same for successful diversity workforce initiatives. As an organization we source from a number of alternate sources, tapping unique skills and experience in order to best achieve the goal of hiring the best possible candidate.
I have said it before and I'll say it again, diversity isn't about accommodation or promoting the inferior, it's about the best talent you can find. The only way you can have the best talent is if you can find and hire it, and you can't do that unless you are looking at everyone. So I guess you might say that for me, diversity, in the employment sense is as simple as this, "look at everyone". I'm not sure it needs to be any more complicated really.
It starts with the "big four" groups inherited from the legal/equity perspective, visible minorities, aboriginal, women and persons with disabilities but in most cases diversity in a company means more than that. Other groups that are often part of it may include new immigrants, LGBT and older workers. But there are even more than that.
I recently came across a definition of diversity that included occupation types! The general idea is that when we talk about “uniting in diversity” we need to be including all the different groups that make up our organization, including groups that are not obvious at first glance. And when you think about it, the concept of inclusion does mean that different business function areas in your company should be working together just as different ages, races or genders are inside each one.
So is diversity really just another word for teamwork?
Someone once said that diversity isn't about the differences between us but about the uniqueness we all share. Isn't that also a good definition of good teamwork?
Successful teamwork takes the unique skills and strengths of individual members and uses them to achieve shared objectives that wouldn't otherwise be reachable on their own. I think you can say the same for successful diversity workforce initiatives. As an organization we source from a number of alternate sources, tapping unique skills and experience in order to best achieve the goal of hiring the best possible candidate.
I have said it before and I'll say it again, diversity isn't about accommodation or promoting the inferior, it's about the best talent you can find. The only way you can have the best talent is if you can find and hire it, and you can't do that unless you are looking at everyone. So I guess you might say that for me, diversity, in the employment sense is as simple as this, "look at everyone". I'm not sure it needs to be any more complicated really.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
The Chicken and the Egg
Last week I was doing some catch up reading on some back issues of HR Reporter when an article caught my eye and almost immediately it caused me to ask myself a question that I have been pondering since. The article was on the link between a good business culture and real business success. It reported that companies who were perceived, by outsiders to have the best culture were the most successful in Canada.
My question though was which of those come first? The article was at the very least trying to imply that culture comes first, that creating a positive, business culture is one of the things that leads to success. I think there is something to that but in reality I'm not sure that you can breed a positive culture without having success first.
We'd all like to think that while the culture of a business could be separated from the level of success, or lack thereof, that a business has, the reality is it cannot. When times are good employees are going to reflect this and so will the general business atmosphere and culture meanwhile when times are bad the inverse is equally true. Everybody would prefer to work for a “winner” and nobody wants to work in an environment where they are worried about the future, the viability of the company and their job security.
At the same time though it's important to recognize that cultures are not fixed forever. If your business is going through a downturn you are not “doomed” to a downward spiral of negative environment producing poor results. Every business will have its ups and downs and businesses do adapt and change all the time.
Now applying this to the diversity space, how does a company become diverse? Do you start by adding diverse candidates or do you need to incorporate diversity into your business culture first?
No real question here that you need diverse candidates, without making hires that reflect your commitment to diversity your plans are hollow but... if your business culture doesn't embrace diversity will top diverse talents stay with your organization?
Which all leads to the question of how you are supposed to incorporate diversity into a culture if you don't have any (or much) diversity yet. As my colleague John wrote earlier in the week organizations that are successful with diversity know that both a top-down and bottom-up strategy is needed and I think the same applies here. If you want a diverse culture you need to bring in diverse candidates of course, but you can't overlook making sure your culture reflects the diversity of where you really want to go.
My question though was which of those come first? The article was at the very least trying to imply that culture comes first, that creating a positive, business culture is one of the things that leads to success. I think there is something to that but in reality I'm not sure that you can breed a positive culture without having success first.
We'd all like to think that while the culture of a business could be separated from the level of success, or lack thereof, that a business has, the reality is it cannot. When times are good employees are going to reflect this and so will the general business atmosphere and culture meanwhile when times are bad the inverse is equally true. Everybody would prefer to work for a “winner” and nobody wants to work in an environment where they are worried about the future, the viability of the company and their job security.
At the same time though it's important to recognize that cultures are not fixed forever. If your business is going through a downturn you are not “doomed” to a downward spiral of negative environment producing poor results. Every business will have its ups and downs and businesses do adapt and change all the time.
Now applying this to the diversity space, how does a company become diverse? Do you start by adding diverse candidates or do you need to incorporate diversity into your business culture first?
No real question here that you need diverse candidates, without making hires that reflect your commitment to diversity your plans are hollow but... if your business culture doesn't embrace diversity will top diverse talents stay with your organization?
Which all leads to the question of how you are supposed to incorporate diversity into a culture if you don't have any (or much) diversity yet. As my colleague John wrote earlier in the week organizations that are successful with diversity know that both a top-down and bottom-up strategy is needed and I think the same applies here. If you want a diverse culture you need to bring in diverse candidates of course, but you can't overlook making sure your culture reflects the diversity of where you really want to go.
Monday, April 4, 2011
Bottom up or top down?
Last week I was interested to read about a bit of a commotion in Germany regarding women in the workplace. It seems that women only make up 3.2% of the members of executive or advisory boards of Germany's top 200 companies. That's a bad number, what makes it even worse, and what the stories last week were about, is that it's a problem that German business has been trying to address for ten years.
Back in 2001 German companies introduced voluntary targets to raise the representation of women in executive or advisory roles. Chancellor Angela Merkel described the effect of these voluntary targets as "modest results" and said that more needs to be done. But really, if 3.2% represents "improvement" when a demographic number would suggest more in the range of 50% the situation really is quite bad.
An outcome of this is that the German Minister of Labour has threatened to impose mandatory quotas that businesses would have to achieve. The numbers being talked about are 30% by 2018, which would be a significant change. As expected, the threat to impose mandatory quotas is not without controversy of course, with companies who would be affected complaining about the possible interference in running strong businesses. In the end the government stated that businesses have 2 more years (till 2013) to triple the number of women in executive roles or the government would force business to address the issue.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out, tripling the number in three years sounds very aggressive until you consider that's still only about 9.5%. It's also interesting to note the excuses and reasons given by these companies. As per usual they claim the results of their strategy simply aren't paying off yet, that they are integrating women into their corporate culture and promotion structure but it takes time to see the results of this at the very top.
No question, bottom up strategies have the largest potential benefit for all those involved. Companies get employees who are invested in the process and are well acclimated with the culture, needs and strategies of the business. But does it actually work?
Historically the conclusion would have to be no. Implementing diversity strategies with only a bottom-up approach seems to time and again to fail and there are good reasons for this.
In the German example we can see one of the reasons why, it takes so long to see results that it's difficult to know if it's working... or not. Now common sense would say that with only 3% it almost certainly is not working, but the businesses make the case that it's impossibly to tell yet and apparently in this case the government agrees that that might be true. True or not the point of difficulty in measuring success in intermediate terms is a problem here and when the success of a strategy is measured in decade cycles that's a real issue.
A second problem, but one I believe just as bad if not worse is that bottom-up strategies don't shock the culture into the change that is needed in order to make the strategy a success. When diverse employees (women or otherwise) look up the corporate ladder and only see white males in the top roles what sort of message do you think that sends to them? How motivational do you think that is? What kind of trust in your diversity strategy will employees who see this have?
Right about as much as you think. And the problem of leadership not reflecting your diversity goals extends to more than just if diverse employees believe you, it's also about the vision and direction of your organization as a whole. Executives in leadership roles are, well, leaders. A company can't really have an inclusive vision without inclusivity in its visionaries.
Don't get me wrong, as I said earlier bottom-up strategies do have long term benefits for companies, investing in top talent will in the long haul bring results. But a bottom-up strategy when it comes to making a company more diverse just doesn't work, on it's own. It's not a question of bottom-up or top-down, but recognizing that to have an effective strategy when it comes to diversity, you need a little bit of both.
Back in 2001 German companies introduced voluntary targets to raise the representation of women in executive or advisory roles. Chancellor Angela Merkel described the effect of these voluntary targets as "modest results" and said that more needs to be done. But really, if 3.2% represents "improvement" when a demographic number would suggest more in the range of 50% the situation really is quite bad.
An outcome of this is that the German Minister of Labour has threatened to impose mandatory quotas that businesses would have to achieve. The numbers being talked about are 30% by 2018, which would be a significant change. As expected, the threat to impose mandatory quotas is not without controversy of course, with companies who would be affected complaining about the possible interference in running strong businesses. In the end the government stated that businesses have 2 more years (till 2013) to triple the number of women in executive roles or the government would force business to address the issue.
It will be interesting to see how this plays out, tripling the number in three years sounds very aggressive until you consider that's still only about 9.5%. It's also interesting to note the excuses and reasons given by these companies. As per usual they claim the results of their strategy simply aren't paying off yet, that they are integrating women into their corporate culture and promotion structure but it takes time to see the results of this at the very top.
No question, bottom up strategies have the largest potential benefit for all those involved. Companies get employees who are invested in the process and are well acclimated with the culture, needs and strategies of the business. But does it actually work?
Historically the conclusion would have to be no. Implementing diversity strategies with only a bottom-up approach seems to time and again to fail and there are good reasons for this.
In the German example we can see one of the reasons why, it takes so long to see results that it's difficult to know if it's working... or not. Now common sense would say that with only 3% it almost certainly is not working, but the businesses make the case that it's impossibly to tell yet and apparently in this case the government agrees that that might be true. True or not the point of difficulty in measuring success in intermediate terms is a problem here and when the success of a strategy is measured in decade cycles that's a real issue.
A second problem, but one I believe just as bad if not worse is that bottom-up strategies don't shock the culture into the change that is needed in order to make the strategy a success. When diverse employees (women or otherwise) look up the corporate ladder and only see white males in the top roles what sort of message do you think that sends to them? How motivational do you think that is? What kind of trust in your diversity strategy will employees who see this have?
Right about as much as you think. And the problem of leadership not reflecting your diversity goals extends to more than just if diverse employees believe you, it's also about the vision and direction of your organization as a whole. Executives in leadership roles are, well, leaders. A company can't really have an inclusive vision without inclusivity in its visionaries.
Don't get me wrong, as I said earlier bottom-up strategies do have long term benefits for companies, investing in top talent will in the long haul bring results. But a bottom-up strategy when it comes to making a company more diverse just doesn't work, on it's own. It's not a question of bottom-up or top-down, but recognizing that to have an effective strategy when it comes to diversity, you need a little bit of both.
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