When Your Recruitment Marketing Agency Threatens You…

Imagine this. You’re wealthy (I know, I know – you’d never imagine that… but for the sake of argument, if you don’t mind just this once…) You’ve got a bunch of money you’d like to invest. You reach out to an advisor, and hire them to manage your fortune. They agree to provide you with regular updates on performance. Seems fair. Things percolate along. You’re not trained at this investing thing, and assume they must be an expert, because… well, because they told you they were.

Time goes on. The “reports” you get are pretty basic, simple Excel spreadsheets. Plus, they only show you “expected results”, not the actual returns. That’s weird. The team that is supporting you seems to change constantly – lots of turnover. That makes you a bit nervous, but you carry on. Eventually, you decide to dig in a little. You’d like to know more detail around how your money’s doing. Heck, you’d at least like more insight into where your money’s going. When you ask the consultants for detail, they tell you not to worry. This makes you worry.

You ask for some detail behind the numbers. They let you log in to the platform they use, and everything seems great. But… also weird. You see a line that shows where around 50% of the money’s invested. Turns out, they’re putting half of your money into their own product. And the tool they’re using to measure & report performance is that same product. The one that’s telling you how great it’s doing.

So, yeah: that seems off. You ask your consultant if you can use some other tool to measure your investments. They get angry, and tell you that will damage your entire portfolio. It feels almost like they’re threatening you. So you move from nervous to mad. You start researching alternatives. Turns out, every advisor you talk to seems to have a similar model: invest half your money in their platform, and then assume it’s giving you accurate reporting on its own performance. Oh, and you ask the advisors (both your current one, and the ones you’re interviewing) if you can talk to representatives from some of the investments you’re making. It’s sizable money, and you kind of feel like as a stockholder you’d be allowed to do that. They all insist that they know best, and that part of their “model” is that they’ll control all the conversations, and that you shouldn’t worry your cute little head about complicated things like this.

Because you’re an idiot, amiright?

At this point, you’ve got a decision. Stay with what seems like a really broken model, one where you’re pretty sure you’re being taken advantage of (or, best case, where your money is not getting the bang for the buck you think it should). That, or take on a task you don’t really have a lot of training in, nor bandwidth for. It feels lose-lose.

Here’s the thing. This is happening in our industry. When I look around at the, that’s what I see a lot of companies struggling with. Last week I sat down with a Fortune 500 prospect, that was using a career site & job distribution tool from the same agency they used for consulting and advisory services around… career site performance and job posting effectiveness. The agency really didn’t like them talking to vendors (ie, Indeed, Glassdoor, etc), and had been insisting that they could handle it for them and that this was standard practice. The prospect had told the vendor they wanted a new platform for their career site, and the vendor told them flat-out “if you do that, it will ruin your SEO, and you don’t want that, just trust us, we’re the experts here”. And, when the client would ask around metrics that went beyond cost-per-applicant, and that could show cost-per-hire (ie, what are the actual, not just projected returns on this investment), they were told the ATS wouldn’t support that. Which is BS, by the way.

That rang a bell. At a previous role, as a practitioner, I fired a competitor to the vendor I’m referencing above. Their line? “If you do this, it will kill your SEO, and you don’t that”. They were, I suspect, also still pissed off that I’d gone behind their backs to a few vendors to see if their data matched up with what I was seeing from my agency. It didn’t.

This is all kinds of messed up. You, as a talent acquisition leader, should be able to trust the data your agency gives you. Annnd, you definitely should be able to talk to your vendors. Not to mention, why do they think they can threaten you, and why in the world do any of them think they’re going to fall for the “our SEO is king!” line? Unless they’re named something like Indeed, Glassdoor, or, say… Google, your career site listings are not coming up first. It just ain’t gonna happen. Heck, your SEO is way more influenced by the activities of your corporate marketing team than they are by a recruitment marketing agency. That’s just how the algorithms work.

I’ve got a whole lot to say about bias and general bs in the industry – because there’s a ton of it. That said, I’m staying focused on the agency piece for now, for two reasons:

1. I work for an agency, and we are deliberately taking  a stance that we’ll never make products. Because we think it’s an automatic conflict of interest, and we think our clients deserve better. We do take a percentage of spend per media site, but it’s a consistent percent across vendors as well as standard advertising industry practice (and something we detail to clients and prospects in writing and verbally).
2. This junk has a huge impact on not just companies, but on the economy. When vendors put their own wallets ahead of hiring, obfuscate data in order to make themselves look better, they hurt all of us. Hiring slows down. Bad hires happen. People lost jobs, kids go hungry, etc etc. It, quite frankly, pisses me the hell off. It should do the same for you.

I don’t know if it’s a crusade, but it matters. Find out what platform you agency uses to track data. Ask them if they take referral fees when their clients buy products where they have a deal with a vendor (dollars influence – heck, we’ve had vendors off us “a free iPad to your reps for every deal they close for us”). Find some former clients, and ask them what it was like to fire the agency. Ask if they’d go back. That sort of stuff. Because it’s your money, and your company.

(Long rant ended – for now)

Monster, Randstad, and… What’s That About HRSmart?

It’s entirely possible you heard the news. Possible. Certainly, if you work in the recruiting industry, it’s definitely possible. Maybe even highly so.

Anyways: Randstad (big giant Dutch recruitment process outsourcing company) bought (former) big giant US job board company Monster.

Which is interesting.

This acquisition may benefit Randstad – the integrations are going to be fascinating – and there’s nothing wrong with that. If they really keep the Monster brand intact, it’s going to be tough long-term (and I don’t see them doing that). So, if it’s not to create an entire separate product company, and it’s me at Randstad, I’m doing this for a simple reason.

Growth, through (a modest) diversification.

The RPOs have had several years of growth in the EU and Asia-Pac, but were more stagnant in the States and Latin America. They’ll likely slow in the EU (political and economic instability may hinder job growth), but continue to scale in Asia-Pac, as hiring by scale vs quality is still more the need for many of the larger manufacturers. The larger RPOs have been retooling internal processes lately, seeking innovations in models, technology, offerings, etc. On the technology side alone, many, if not all, of them are dealing with legacy contracts from clients, have to work with disparate ATS’s due to their client base, often don’t do CRM internally, etc. Because of this, they don’t have the ability to get a strong handle on source tracking, SEO, etc etc, because their data is in multiple places.

Ranstad’s move makes sense, in this context. If they want to rip out a number of internal, hodgepodge systems, and replace them with something new, unified, and efficient (not to mention being able to provide this suite, at a cost, as a service to clients), then they have two options: build from the ground up, or buy an existing stack and adapt it.

My money’s on the latter. To buttress, consider this: the Ranstad Investment Fund that invest only in TA/ recruitment start-ups. Some of them, you know. They also have a really smart team.

Here’s why I think it adds up. First, Randstad is buying a stack that has some tested technology across most of the recruitment cycle. I say most of, for a reason. There are a couple important gaps.

Roughly, define the recruitment process as starting with “we need to hire someone” to end with “they started”. It’s everything in that gap. Monster’s tools hit at pieces of that process (sometimes over and over) – they’ve got workforce planning tools to get the job opened, advertising and research tools to find people, a CRM to keep track of leads, a career site hosting product for you, and an applicant tracking system (ATS) so you can track people as they apply and move through your process. The issue is… not all of it works well, or necessarily together. There are still issues with integration across the tools. The CRM is a challenge, to say the least. And – strangely – the ATS and career site hosting offerings aren’t even Monster-owned products.

That’s right: two of, one could easily argue, the most important parts of the overall hiring process, are not Monster. They’re HRSmart, owned by  . HRSmart no longer works very well (source tracking is minimal-to-nothing, career site occasionally goes offline for hours – sometimes an entire day, etc). We’ve been urging Monster to work on the issues, but… well, not their product. And the products owners are Deltek, which is simply a private equity backed acquisition play that is not investing in development. So they’re not gonna fix it.

I see a possible future. If Randstad completes their acquisition, they’ll have some holes to fill in the offering stack. Notably, ATS and career site. Randstad invests in recruitment technology, and there’s an opinion out there that it’s simply as a way to test and potentially acquire technology firms. One of their investments is a platform called gr8people: a career-site product, ats, and CRM all in one.

Again, if I’m doing strategy at Randstad, I’m sliding those products into the stack, and shoving HRSmart out. Heck, I’m looking at my entire portfolio, and saying “can we really step up, and offer a working ERP that focuses purely on TA? It makes sense, right? You get your own internal ERP running, since it can track the vast majority of your product cycle; can offer a full stack to your clients; and get all that anonymized data in one spot, finally, where you can begin to build data models.

Here’s the rub for you, the HRSmart user: this doesn’t happen tomorrow. You’re still stuck with a platform that’s frustrating, and not going to get any better due to the integration. You may get access to the Randstad stack at some point, but it’s going to come with costs (higher fees, unlikely you’ll be able to just buy career site hosting & ATS, pressure to go RPO).

If it’s me, and now I’m just me, the guy who used to run Talent Acquisition at a few places, and thinks about this stuff way too much, I’m going to want to hear about options if I’m an HRSmart customer. Heck, I may just want to hear about options because I don’t like my current platform. If only for safety, to make sure what I’m doing makes sense (there are a loooot of options out there right now).

Can I Help?

Since I’ve been there, and feel your pain, I’d love to make an offer (paying it forward, since I’ve been given similar help in my time).

Call me. Well, or e-mail me for times, and we’ll set something up. A half-hour chat, about where you’re at, and what are your options. I’ll pontificate, probably, but mostly there will be good advice, and probably some laughs. A shared war story. Or two.

Here’s the info:
Phone: 617-488-9444
E-mail: martin@hireclix.com

HireClix Strategic Consulting Services Launches

So, first off: let me say that working at HireClix is like working with a bunch of people you love, all of whom just want to make recruitment marketing better.

Wait: it’s not like that. It is that.

Recruitment marketing thunder-buddies for life.

Thing is, we decided it was time to start talking more publicly about the new group we’re setting up. We’re gearing it around the idea of being a Sherpa for our talent acquisition clients, helping them find the top of whatever mountain they’re climbing, silent partners who know the best paths, and tools, to help them succeed. We’re playing with names for the new group (Sherpa is in the lead, but Recruity McRuitface, and Tequilla Cobra are strong contenders – that may tell you a bit about our culture, too: very boring, and buttoned up…).

We’ll offer a number of service, and more to come.

The Strategic Consulting Services will include…

• Talent Acquisition Architecture & Design
• Recruiting Systems Review and Selection
• Recruiting Process Transformation
• Applicant Tracking System Audit & Optimization
• Recruitment Marketing Audit & Assessment
• Customized Strategic Services

Meantime, we just issued a press release. I’m blatantly using my blog’s SEO to give it additional life. I’d be thrilled if you shared it around. And, if you happen to work for, say the Boston Globe, Wall Street Journal, or – heck – the National Enquirer, feel free to republish (btw, if you’re with the latter publication, yes, that was Elvis, and no, Bigfoot was not drunk at my New Years Party – that was the Yeti, because: sherpas).

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.

Career Question on Human Resources Versus Marketing Majors – and, My Twist On the Whole Thing

Got a question from an Egyptian MBA student in Germany  (yup, that’s right – I’ve gone international thanks to Xing – love that site).

Here’s the Q, and then the A.  (Just in context, I’m inclined to view human resources and recruiting as pretty clearly separate – there’s overlap, of course, but more along the lines of the overlap that happens when sales lines up a contract and then hands it off to finance to set the client up in AR, etc).

> Hello M. Burns,
>
> i am an MBA student in germany. I am egyptian, and i am in the
> process of chossing the major within MBA studies.
> I would like to ask you for advice concerning the 2 fields Human
> Resources Management & Marketing. Actually i am interested in Human
> Resources Management field, but i am afraid i can not find an
> internship and job in the near future.
>
> from your experiences what would you advise me to do? and how do you
> see the H.R.M. field in the work areana?
>
> I would like to thank you in advance.
> kind regards,
> maha

Hi Maha – Thanks for the question.  I’m going to post this whole thing to my blog – https://recruiter.wordpress.com, since I think it’s a great inquiry.

Actually, I think it would be interesting if you could define your major so that it bridged marketing and HR, and geared up to become a Recruiter instead of an HR-type (they’re actually very distinct disciplines as we’re discovering on this side of the pond).   Here’s why: the best organizations (ZoomInfo, Google, etc) are very smart about how they attract and retain their talent.  This means they’ve turned traditional HR concepts on their heads, and look at it like this – view your open positions as products you’re trying to “sell”, and the overall culture of the organization as it’s “brand”.  So, you have a marketing message and a product line. You define a marketing campaign geared at driving interest in working at your organization.  You use a Web-based applicant tracking system to capture potential “clients” (job applicants0, and then assess how “hot” the lead is (i. e., how qualified the candidate is).  From there, you bring in the prospect (think of it as a sales call where the potential client comes to you), market the role the them (at the same time, they’re marketing themselves to you – it’s weird, I know).  Make an offer, negotiate terms & contracts (this is where it gets more like biz-dev, because you’re looking at bartering of services and knowledge, with some cash mixed in, and you’re setting up an exclusive partnership), and close the deal.  It’s a classic lead-gen driven sales process, from start to finish.  Frankly, it’s like an entire business cycle, and various steps along the way can be easily related to most aspects of business.  The one area that is touched on the lightest – ironically – is Operations and Finance.  You’ll get involved setting up salary and benefits, and possibly some logistics around IT & office set-up, but not much accounting beyond that.  You’ll spend more time thinking like a marketer and sales person – and yet, until things change, you’ll probably wind up being part of Operations.  Just a hold-over from the traditional habit of shoving Recruiting into HR.

Traditional HR doesn’t think like this, which is a shame – when you look closely at the most successful organizations (the top 5% in any industry), you’ll almost invariably find out that those firms look at recruiting as a sales and marketing driven role, and not a reactive, operational one.  They may not consciously define it this way – or even break it out of HR – but when you look at how they operate you’ll see the diference.  They’ll be strategic, proactive, and creatve in how they drive talent into the organization.