When Women Self-Select Out of the Hiring Process

I was having a cup of coffee the other day (those of you who know me, recognize this as code for: basically every moment of every day), when my wife asked me for some help applying for a job she’d seen in our childrens school district. Since I’m a geek around recruiting, job descriptions, etc, I got into it. The description – “.8 Technology Integrator” (gotta love a compelling job title, way to market the sexy on this one, Newburyport), seemed pretty straightforward, and a good match for her skills and experience.

Here’s where it gets interesting – here’s how a man generally sees things:

“There are 8 required skills. She has 6 of them down cold, one is easy to reboot (Mass teaching license, her’s is lapsed, but so what?), and one she can get done with a bit of time. Granted, the last one’s important – an Instructional Tech Specialist license, but she’s done enough homework on how to get it, and has enough relevant work experience that it shouldn’t be a big deal. On top of that, even if it rules her out for this exact position, the role’s open, and somebody somewhere is saying ‘I can’t keep working 60+ hours a week, at this point, I’ll take someone who can at least do part of the work, I’m desperate’.

Cool – they’re definitely going to at least want to talk with her, and it never hurts to try no matter what. At least her name will be in front of them, in case something else comes up. [Insert cliches about missing every shot you don’t take, foot in the door, something about eagles taking flight, yadda yadda]”

Here’s how my wife, and many women, see this (I know she does, because when I said basically the same thing I wrote above, to her, she gave me this response):

“Holy crap, I only meet 6 of the requirements, they’re never going to want to talk to me. I’m not going to apply.”

You may have noticed a slight… difference, in our perspective. Women seem to self-select out very early in the hiring process. Heck, they don’t even really start the process. It seems to be powered by the confidence piece that Sheryl Sandberg talks about in Lean In.

This haunts me (quoted from an excelent Atlantic article by Katty Kay and Claire Shipman):

“Hewlett-Packard discovered several years ago, when it was trying to figure out how to get more women into top management positions. A review of personnel records found that women working at HP applied for a promotion only when they believed they met 100 percent of the qualifications listed for the job. Men were happy to apply when they thought they could meet 60 percent of the job requirements.”

Now, admittedly, some of what I’m writing about is anecdotal – and, Curt Rice has a critical critique of the HP piece on his blog (he writes on gender equality, etc, and is very much a white hat) – so take it as this: not hard and fast data. But… personal experience, research that begins to back it up, very little that opposes that data, and my experience working with job applicants seems to bear the theory out. It’s an issue, and we need to understand it.

So, here’s the thing: if you do, in fact, do this, opting out before you even opt it: stop it. (Heck, if you’re a man and you do this, stop it, too). Stop selling yourself short. I know there’s a ton behind this, that our society has been programming you since the get-go (eff you, Mattel!) to think of yourselves as somehow not as strong, not as lucky, not as… men. And that’s probably one of the stinkiest piles I’ve come across in a long time. Each and every one of you has one shot in life, just like the men you know. Each and every one of you is not defined by gender, but by who you are, and what you chose. Chose to apply for that job, if you fall somewhere in the ballpark (within some level of reason: that degree in writing poetry – yes, that’s a thing I did – means my dreams of applying for a role as a rocket scientist are likely shot, but it does mean I’m not shy about thinking I’d make a hell of a ad copywriter if I ever decided to walk that path).

Cliche inserting time: you miss every shot you don’t take, and there’s no penalty for taking the shot. Go forth, and conquer. Yadda yadda.

How to Retain People

So, I was on Stack Overflow (I like it there). The keychain “feature” Apple offers drives me nuts from time to time (or, maybe it’s just the sketchy way Chrome saves passwords…), and I was looking for solutions. Came across a question on the topic, with a highly rated answer. The answerer, a guy named Amro, has a blog.

Long(ish) story short, he has a solid post from about a year ago, about how to hang onto your employees – particularly the tech talent that’s all the rage these days. Bunch of good thoughts, but the one that sticks with me is “Employees don’t want to feel like “resources.””

Bingo. I work with someone who refers to our colleagues as resources. I’ve never once heard them say “colleague”, “employee”, or even “human resource”. A cog in a factory, a robot welding a car, a cow in a freaking farm: are resources. People aren’t. People, btw, absolutely know who refers to them as resources – and, feel the same level of loyalty to that company as, say, that cog does to its factory.

Want to retain people? The bells & whistles, benefits and pay, matter, but they stop mattering the minute you try and turn those people into “resources”. Want to know how they feel? Here:

Cut. It. Out.

Seriously. Shocking that it’s still going on – and, my peers in the HR & Recruiting communities have a share of the blame. Fight the power, etc etc. Make sure you capture data on work-life balance both when you’re recruiting as well as during exit interviews. Tie that into why people are leaving your company, and add in how often it comes up as a pain-point when you’re talking to candidates. If you can reduce turnover by 10%, multiply that times your cost-per-hire, and you can make a pretty quick case to your colleagues about treating people like, well, people.

*Also – and as an aside – Amro’s a great example of why it pays to have some level of presence online, and in your field. He’s now thought highly of by a company in his space, that’s doing very cool things. This is how you maintain a career, people.

Senior Talent Acquisition Positions – Mobiquity – Boston, New York City

Just to follow up on my previous post, here’s the official job:

Senior Talent Acquisition Specialists – Mobiquity – Boston and NYC Offices

Are you interested in being a key part of a new recruiting department – one that’s focused on 21^st Century recruiting? Inbound-marketing oriented, utilizing the most cutting edge tools available today, a team that will invent practices and approaches that will be emulated by other recruiters?

Want to change the world (of recruiting, at any rate)? Want to have fun while you’re at it, as part of a highly respected team that works for a company that gets how important recruiting is?

Then, what are you waiting for? Seriously: skip reading the rest of this if you understand how unique that all is, and apply. Now. Toot suite, and all of that. And (or), reach out to Martin Burns, Director of Talent Acquisition: www.linkedin.com/in/martinburns/

The idea is: you get it, too. You’re a recruiter, and you think that’s pretty darned cool. You’re proud of what you do. You want to be valued, given lots of room to experiment, and take pride in helping build a company. It’s what you do.

Recruiting for a services company is fascinating: the number of moving parts, dynamic nature of the business, and how important it is to hire the absolute best makes it a unique environment for recruitment. Layer in a start-up, rapidly scaling tech company on the cutting edge of the next wave of technology, and you’ve got a unique challenge. Mobiquity is a professional services firm working with the Global 2000 to create innovative mobile solutions and apps that drive business value.  Combining strategy, user-experience design, app development and backend integration, Mobiquity delivers solutions that span the entire mobile ecosystem, driving business innovation and competitive advantage. The people are key – and, so is recruitment.

Here are some bullets….

Roles & responsibilities

• Be awesome. Funny helps, too.
• Create, and maintain, talent pools of appropriate candidates for a group of roles you’ll own – heavy on the tech side, but likely to include a mix of marketing, sales, G&A, etc
• Treat your candidates like people – because, that’s what they are. Get back to them on time, be honest about their status, don’t overpromise.
• Partner closely with hiring authorities, making sure you understand what they need, and keeping up active communication with them throughout the hiring process.
• Create engaging recruitment-marketing, from job descriptions and live events, to campaigns that drive candidates to the company.
• Research & source from unique corners – you’re not on Monster: you’re on GitHub & Stack Overflow.
• Prescreen candidates: you find it a point of pride that when it’s time to make an offer, you know exactly what it will take to close the A-player you’re looking to bring onboard.
• Gather input from subject matter experts across the company – you’re probably a sponge by nature. You find learning fantastic.
• Set up related campaign workflow, tracking and alerts within the CRM and marketing automation systems
• Track, analyze and communicate to stakeholders about candidates, the hiring market, and what it will take to keep a pipeline of A-level candidates engaged and – ultimately – hired.

Qualifications & experience

• At least 3-5 years of experience in a fast-paced recruitment environment
• Ideally, you’ve worked corporate and agency sides of the business
• Experience working with an ATS – we use JobVite, but that’s not required, everything’s teachable
• You like people – and, they tend to like you…
• Solid writing skills – you have fun creating engaging copy and job descriptions
• Did we mention a sense of humor?
• Organizational skills help – but, not rigidity. You need to be comfortable with a bit of chaos. It’s spicy.

Seeking Extraordinary Talent Acquisition Professionals: Boston, Redwood City, and Beyond

In putting together a job description/ ad for the talent acquisition professionals I’m looking for, I wound up writing a manifesto. Not sure it’s what I’ll run with, but I like it. Kind of a lot – thought it deserved life somewhere, and since I have this handy little platform available to me, I’m going to take advantage. Please, feel free to pass along, dissect, disavow, dissemble, diagnose… just, don’t duplicate (unless you’re willing to pin the blame on me). Never was a fan of copycats.

In any event: I’m building a team. It’s going to be fun. There’s loads of potential, a great platform, some interesting challenges, and support from the executive team. Don’t expect me to breathe down your neck, but do expect me to help you when you need it. I know I need people in Waltham (near Boston), Redwood City (that’d be near San Francisco), and I’ll probably need somebody in Gainesville.

Senior Talent Acquisition Consultant                                                                                                                               

Ever want to be part of building something extraordinary? Now’s your chance.

Why Join Mobiquity? Why Now? Because it’s Your Best Move, and Now is When it’s Available

There’s a reason why thought-leaders like Andrew Hiser, the pioneer of human-centered software design, have joined Mobiquity. It’s because they see the future becoming the present: Mobile changing everything.

It’s the 5^th Wave. The world in your pocket. Applications that tell doctors how well your medication is working as it passes through your body, to ones that alert a restaurant that you’ve pulled into their lot and are ready for you to walk their take-out to them.

Apps that help drug addicts recover, and apps that will help you retire wealthy.

We’re not talking about flinging birds at pigs anymore (fun as that is). We’re talking about changing how people behave, how business gets done, and how we will shape the future.

Mobiquity is at the leading edge of the wave. Positioned to define the future of mobile, a name that will become as familiar to the world as the names of the biggest successes out of the Internet wave.

Talent Acquisition Makes it All Possible

Without solid talent, organizations stagnate and fade away. Without the greatest talent, organizations can’t surge, can’t become the key leaders in their space. Our job is to make sure that happens. We seek real recruiters. Budding talent acquisition thought leaders. We get the big It: that it’s always about the people. That A players hire A players, while B’s hire C’s, C’s hire D’s, and well… then you get to F. Failure.

Our role is to find the A’s, engage with them, excite them, and help them through the hiring process. We’re matchmakers to the Nth degree, but we’re also business people. We use marketing, social media, talent pools, innovative sourcing & research, and a degree of sales skills to attract the very best. We never cut corners, we don’t lie, harass, or avoid hard truths: we are the A-players of recruitment.

We Are Looking for You

Join us, if you see recruitment as much of a calling as a profession – if it’s your passion, as much as your paycheck. We’re going to blow some things up. You should find that exciting. You should feel process is a tool best used lightly. You should be funny. Funny matters, in this role and in life.

If you’re sitting there, thinking “holy crap – I’ve been looking for this!”, you have the next step in your journey to greatness: Find our Talent Acquisition leader, Martin Burns (you can use your mad Boolean to do that right now, or just scroll down a bit). He’s looking for people want you to share some new skills, try new approaches and make some mistakes along the way, and to grow into leaders in our game-changing, rapidly evolving profession. His goal is to make sure you get the opportunity to do all of that.

Make the Best Move – Join Mobiquity

You can find Martin all sorts of places: mburns@mobiquity.com. 617.851.7277. twitter. linkedin. facebook. etc, etc…. You’re in the game. You get it.

Related articles

• Dr. Changelove: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying, and Went to Mobiquity (recruiter.wordpress.com)

The Funny Things Candidates Send Us

JobMob has a post up with a list of funny things candidates send to recruiters (hint: if you’re formatting your resume like a Playboy centerfold “fact sheet” – and you list “intelligent people” as your biggest turn-on, spell intelligent right). It’s a pretty fun read, and eye-opening. Some of those tactics actually worked.

Granted – many of them don’t. I generally recommend you only go all-in if you’ve got a good, relevant reason to do so (for instance, I’m sure Playboy’s seen the centerfold-resume schtick before, and are probably okay with it, but Bank of America might not think it’s as… appropriate). Also, be careful what you send – boob cupcakes (sense a theme here?) can, and did, misfire.

In my time, I’ve gotten a few fun ones: giant novelty aspirin; Target flip-flops; a vinyl copy of Stand! by Sly and the Family Stone; a copy of The 21 Balloons; money (seriously – well, not “real” money, just a book of McDonald’s coupons – which showed lack of research, as I’m not a fan of the golden arches). Actually, the only one that got the candidate an interview was the giant aspirin, and that’s because it was a prop in a nifty marketing campaign from the candidate. Who I’m still in contact with, because he’s clever and interesting.

I’m curious – if you’re a recruiter, what sort of weird/ greatness have you gotten? If you’re a candidate, ever tried this approach? Succeed? Fail? Would you do it again?

We’re Under-educating Ourselves Into Another Crash

This is absolutely not meant to be a political statement – I try to stay neutral on my blog, LinkedIn, Twitter, and only let my hair down marginally on Facebook. All that said, something’s been bothering me.

I’m in recruiting – if anybody’s going to feel employment moving as part of their day-to-day, it’s us. My business is up 10% over last 2011, and 2011 was up 10% over 2010. That means one, simple thing: companies are feeling the pinch of hiring enough that they’re willing to pay a partner to help them out.

That’s not to say that it’s a free-for-all in hiring. The unemployment numbers speak to that. What it means is something more troubling. There’s a serious dearth of skilled IT workers in the US right now, and that’s driven by cuts in STEM over the past few decades, as well as our clamping down on H1Bs. Those now run out almost as soon as the year starts – to get new H1Bs, companies have to plan 6 months+ out and reserve enough for themselves. We’re going to see this trend continue, until one of two things happens:

A: Government and corporations get back into bed, and start skills-training programs like they have in places like Germany, which will eat into the pool of unemployed. Many – if not most – of the unemployed are simply unhirable in this economy, no matter what level or regulations are put on/ taken off of corporate America. Unhirable. Impossible to hire. Done. 8% unemployment for the long haul, GOP or Dems in control, I don’t care: these people will not get hired. Unless they acquire new skills.

B: The economy hits a breaking point, due to the lack of skilled workers. I have clients who are beginning to shelve products, because they can’t find the right workers. Clients who are at risk of passing up lucrative consulting assignments, because they don’t have enough talented engineers to do the work they’re being offered on a silver platter by clients who can’t hire the people to do the work internally. This simply cannot hold – the work is beginning to migrate to companies that are _truly_ offshore, incorporated in a foreign nation, being taxed by a different government, and employing people who will never migrate here.

Option B, quite bluntly, sucks. Option A is expensive, in the short term. Because it’s an investment – and those require costs up front. It means investing in education, nationally, by the one entity big enough and established enough to do so – that’s us. We the people. We, the government. If we can fund voc-techs, and amp up our community colleges, while partnering with local companies who will offer co-ops and some sort of promise of employment if the student performs well in their new skills training, I think we can do this thing. But, if we keep sniping back and forth about how “my guy’s Luke Skywalker, your guy’s Darth Vader” (when we all know both of them are Jar Jar Binks), we’re going to get stuck. Really stuck.

Microsoft Tech Junkie? Like Your .NET, C#, SQL? Come to Code Mastery, Boston – It’s Freeeeeeee……

So, this is a little bit of me helping out a favorite client (Magenic), a little bit of me helping you out (if you’re a smartie who happens to dig developing in and around the .NET platform, or just wants to be around a bunch of nice geeks on a Wednesday), and a bit of me helping, well, me (because, I’d like to meet you, and help you with your next career move into a great company).

Magenic is a very cool, high-end custom application development shop. They do big project based work for clients that have hard problems to solve. The projects typically run 6 months+, are local to the office, six-seven figures in size, and require the use of the most cutting edge Microsoft technology available (for those of you whose religion is, say, Java, Ruby, whatever, calm down – .NET people are good people, too, they just develop in a diferent church platform than you do). The typical project team is a mix of architects(s), senior engineers, design, QA, project manager, etc. They don’t tend to outsource, as it helps with quality control. In between projects, consultants focus on training, speaking engagements, etc. Because they have to do some pretty heavy stuff, they hire really engaged, talented engineers and architects to get that done. Then, they give them lots of training opporunities, cool projects to work on, and the opportunity to speak at technical events like Code Camp, SharePoint Saturday, etc, about what they’re working on.

Which brings us to the post in question. They also run a series of events called Code Mastery. These are free, day-long events where they talk about what’s happening now, and whats coming, in the future for Microsoft. The speakers are interesting, bright, and highly informed, and include MVPs like Rocky Lhotka You’ll walk away with a ton of actionable information, as well ast contacts who do what you do, so well. There’s one coming up near Boston in a week that I think you should get to, if it sounds like your kinda gig.

And, if you’re looking for a job, you may well walk away with an interview scheduled…

Here’re the particulars:

Register here: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/3290438791?ref=ebtnebregn

Go here: 21 Jones Rd, Waltham MA o2451

On: May 2nd, 2012 at 8 am

Hope to see you there.

US CEOs Planning Surge in Hiring Throughout 2012

CEOs across industries announce major 2012 hiring plans. US employers may add 1.7m+ jobs this year http://ow.ly/8sn34

The Struggle to Hire Despite High Unemployment: Thoughts on What This Means for the Future

via online.wsj.com

Interesting data from the Wall Street Journal. If this isn’t handled well, it’s fuel for a widening gap between the wealthy and the poor. The way to address it lies in how we view the gathering of personal treasure (ie: our daily bread).

The concern I have is that as we see jobs get more & more specialized, there’s an increasing number of “generalist” who will be find they can no longer swim in the hiring pool. They’ll be forced to pick up jobs at much lower wages, sell their homes or default on their mortgages, etc. Longer term, they won’t be able to put their children through college, provide for a decent retirement, health care, putting more money into the economy, etc etc.

It’s kind of a big deal.

So: couple ideas. One, we just let it ride and pray the free market sorts it out. I’m not inclined to blind faith in anything – and we’ve seen what an unfettered “free market” can do in places like Somalia. Or here (mortgage crisis, anyone?)

Other options? Sure. We convince employers to stop innovating, and return to standardized skill set needs. I don’t like that approach, either. Fact is – by using unique approaches to product development, companies can create amazing change, from social media (ie, distributed here via Posterous via Gmail), to life-saving medicines.

I’m thinking about a third approach: a truly mobilized workforce. It becomes less about a permanent (ie, 2 – 5 years) position at a company where your skills don’t develop much, and more about contracts where firms need your unique skills, and where in between gigs you spend a month or two training.

This is a pretty fundamental shift. It’s the norm for a percent of the population right now (IT contractors are a good example), but less so for, say marketers, sales reps, etc. In order for it to work, private industry and government would need to work out a system: training centers (community colleges, private schools, etc) set up for the rapid skill training; standardized skill-assessments and scoring (ie, HP has a project, decided it needs X amount of front end developers with a JavaScript rating of 8.5 or better, CSS of 7.7 or better, etc); an increase in agencies that place contractors; portable benefits; more and more, of course.

The fundamentals are in place. National health care, a work-force that has been forced to contract to survive during the Great Recession, the evolution of agile product development.

Recruiters have a huge part to play in this. We’re deep in the process, and probably more aware of the hiring issues that are coming than most people out there. I’m interested in hearing your thoughts….