Archimedes Moves Me

 

 

Here’s the thing: I believe experience can change us. That we’re just lumps of rock, and time is the wind, the water, washing over us. We are eroded as we go. I chose to control my shaping, as much as I could, early in my career. Not the minutia, the fine lines, but the broader strokes. To seize the wind and the water, and point it’s power at sections of me that I wanted to change. If I was shy, stuttered, talked too fast, and had a hard time talking, wrote poetry and read sci-fi? I was going to go into a role with that required me to be chatty, charismatic, etc: recruitment. Full commission. No draw. No food if I failed.

That’s the origin story – there’s tons of stupid detail behind that, and we can talk over beers about it someday, but I want to move forward and justify both my blog title, and my career. Because I stuck with it. I made this happen, and I’m proud of that.

I still talk way too fast. I still love sci fi. I’m still shy (I have managed to mask that last bit beautifully, but know this, when we’re talking, that I’m not 100% sure you give a crap – you’re still the coach, and I’m that kid you just kind hadda deal with). But… I found a lever. And I want to change the world. Because that’s important, in life. I don’t want to die without making change. My legacy will not be “he was that nice, quiet kid who wrote poem, wonder what ever happened to him…” No. Since I’m not a person of faith, my view is that this is my one shot, and I want it to count. To move the world.

Nothing major…

Archimedes once wrote: “give me a lever long enough, and I will move the world”. I can get behind that. I need a lever, before I go.

The economy matters – goods, commerce, food, all of it. It’s the engine. It impacts how we eat, sleep, grow, meet, date, survive. Affect the economy? That’s a lever. But… how?

Recruitment. Mother-effing-recruitment. Think about it: the economy is about money. The transfer of goods, via symbols. The way to collect those symbols is via a job (yes, yes: “welfare, blah blah blah” – fuck you, by the way: study after study shows that most people want to work, it’s just part of our DNA). Jobs bring us money, we spend money, the wheel is lubricated, etc etc. If you can impact the speed at which people get hired, their carer arc, job satisfaction, etc, you are greasing the wheel. And, on the other side of the table, the faster companies can hire the right people (that last bit is huge, and making mistakes there is always why companies fail), the better they can grow, hire more, etc. It’s that whole virtuous circle thing.

Most of the people in my industry are clueless about how important they are in this equation. And, to be fair: a some of them are terrible at it. There’s a whole ‘nother blog post coming on that.

I think I get it – and it’s why, despite my wandering eye for a career as dime-store poet, I stay in the game: I’m holding that lever. What I’m doing effing matters. There are hardly any other careers out there that have this level of impact. Each time I make a positive change to my profession, it means somebody’s job search got better. They found work faster. Their kids are less hungry, they’re less stressed out, they’re reinvesting in the economy via Wegmans, funding the PTA, flying the friendly skies again, etc etc. They’re tickling the economy. And, my work powered that – it mattered. And, at an enterprise level, working with huge brands, it really matters. It scales. By being active in my industry, the blog, my speaking engagements (huge irony there), etc etc, I move my industry. The lever moves, and the world moves with it.

I will always be that kid who didn’t get picked – but screw that: I decided to captain my own fate. I found a lever, and I’m am putting my weight on it. I encourage you to do the same…

Wanna Grab a Coffee? Talent Acquisition/ HR Conference Update

Hi there –

I tend to bop around the globe from time-to-time, generally for honorable purposes. October, far from the cruelest month, is when I’m at some fall conferences. I’m at three (so far) for the month. If you’re planning on attending any, I’d love to catch up and talk shop, look at tech, etc. Vendors: love to hear what you have to say – predictive analytics, talent pools, inbound marketing, social, and mobile are high on my interest list.

Here’s my quick list:

• 10/2: Boston Recruitment Media Day (presenting) http://bit.ly/1wcueBq
• 10/7-10/10: HRTech: http://www.hrtechconference.com/index.html
• 10/20-10/24: LinkedIn Talent Connect: http://business.linkedin.com/events/talent-connect/north-america.html

E-mail, DM, text, carrier pigeon, etc me at your convenience…

The Intersection of Brand With Talent Migration

Funny thing. When you have actual, honest-to-goodness, freaking wonderful time to read, think, talk, and then digest all that delicious stuff into energy. When you have time, you get to refuel. When you’re as fascinated by every bright and shiny object as me, that can mean a lot of tanking up.

I’ve found myself most fascinated – if I can find a way to wrap a bunch of diverse learnings and tangential readings into one neat(ish) package – by the evolution of talent migration and employment culture. I know this is absolutely thrilling stuff.  Just, likely, not to you.

I’ll try and break down what I’ve been thinking about (if you’re not interested in recruiting, HR, and/ or the success or failure of companies, feel free to move on):

• The job market has changed – radically
  • We’ve gone from a model where there were less jobs than there were available workers
  • Roles continue to increase in specialization, increasing the strain on the job market – Vector Composites, a high-tech manufacturing company in Dayton, is so strapped for knowledge workers that it partnered with a local community college and created a curriculum to train local laid off auto workers
  • Boomers may have delayed their retirement thanks to the recession, but this is just putting off a bill that’s going to come due sooner than we like – that’s a huge additional strain on the talent pool just waiting to happen. And it will.
  • Millennials and Gen-Xers have shorter attention spans
    • Millennials in particular
  • Social media (you knew it had to show up here) can get the word out about openings quickly, but can just as quickly damage a company’s reputation – I’m just waiting for the first “Nestle” to happen to a company concerning its hiring practices/ employment culture.
• HR & Recruitment are more trusted by execs as business leaders than they had been in the past (when HR was often looked upon as a bit of a joke)
  • But: This is not nearly universal, nor is it generally strong enough trust
  • Earned or unearned disdain? Too metaphysical a question to get into as an aside
• The next wars will be fought within HR’s domain
  • Talent. It will all come down to who has the most, and the most access to more as they need it.
• Talent organizations within companies will need to be led by visionary, adaptable leaders who won’t (or don’t know enough to) adhere to an old-school style of HR
  • They will likely be called upon to do the radical (where it makes sense)
    • IE: changing your leadership development approach will “require profoundly different attitudes and mind-sets as well as major organizational changes.” (Charan, Ram: Leaders at All Levels, Willey, 2008)
• If companies are made or broken by their employees, and the inventory of able employees is about to contract, then we should see some large-scale corporate failures as a direct result.
• The key to the future lies in flexibility and attraction
  • Flexibility: your turnover rate is going to increase. You need to be okay with this. You also need to prepare
    • Stay on top of your succession planning
    • Make sure your succession planning is global (ie, internal as well as external – your promotion pipelines should extend well beyond your org chart)
    • Recognize that your company may well have to change how it views employees: the speed that tech & marketing are shifting may require you to contract for specific, project-based employees much more so than you are now
    • Develop deep and continuously refreshing talent pools
  • Attraction
    • Take a “be like Google” attitude here: over 3k top-tier applicants per week, minimal advertising or outside agency help
      • Brilliant branding
      • Partnering closely with marketing
      • PR as a candidate-traffic driver
      • Become loved: fresh engineering grad (true quote): “Well, I applied at X, Y, and Z. And Google. I don’t want to move cross-country, but, well, they’re Google. I would for them.”
    • Be hard to leave, and easy to come back to
      • Be the girl/ boy they gave up because they were too young, but that they can’t get out of their minds. The standard for any future relationship. Wait for a ring.
      • Pay attention to your organization: who are your future leaders? Are you challenging them enough? Do you have redundancies for if (when) they leave to go “date around”? Are you confident they will return?
    • Are you doing it right? Easy test: see how many of your employees brag about where they work. IE (actual Twitter bio): “I’m magic. I play at Mullen.”

What am I interested in? Standing at that intersection: where how organizations behave and adapt to the talent issue influences their survival.