GROWTH CAN BE UGLY: LinkedIn Clarifies that Working Girls Aren't Welcome...

I called the use of LinkedIn by professional escorts back in March. Check out the data from that post below:

"The keyword "sexy" generated 13% of my profile views generated by a keyword search.

Sexy.  Boom.  That just happened.  See the graphic to the right."

So 13% of the keyword searches that led to a click-through of my profile started with the word "sexy".  I later found that the following text in my profile (talking about my other blog, Fistful of Talent) was the source of the keyword in question. Here's what it says:

"The origin of FOT is simple to trace. In late 2007, Kris Dunn (KD) got a call from a major conference company: “We want to hire you to create a Talent Management blog for our new website”, the suits said, “Like the HR Capitalist but without all the boring HR stuff like legal issues and employee relations tactics – just the sexy stuff.”

I thought that proved that lots of people are using LinkedIn for... Let's say "interesting" reasons. Check out what I wrote in March:

"VP of HR" produced 1% of the profile views from all total keyword searches that ended up on my profile. "Sexy" returned 13%.

You tell me what people are using LinkedIn for.  I'm out."

LinkedIn announced yesterday that working girls/guys are specifically prohibited from using its platform to market services.  More from The Verge:

"LinkedIn has set itself up as one of the premiere sites for professionals to connect and look for employment, but one controversial category of workers appears to be getting the cold shoulder: sex workers are now prohibited from using the service to advertise their wares or their experience. This new restriction appears to cover both larger agencies like VIP escort services as well as individual workers. The change comes through an update to LinkedIn's user agreement that rolled out last week; it now states that "even if it is legal where you are located, [users may not] create profiles or provide content that promotes escort services or prostitution." It appears that even those whose sex-related careers are legal, LinkedIn doesn't want to promote such content on its site.

Unsurprisingly, there's been a bit of an online backlash from sex workers who used the site to connect with clients — and there's a sense of discrimination because of the more risqué nature of their businesses. "I'm fully legal," says Madison Graham, a prostitute at Dennis Hof's Love Ranch North in Carson City NV. "I'm a legal business, and I should be treated with the same respect as any other legal business." But as a private site, LinkedIn is well within its rights to make these decisions, and it's not really a change from its earlier policy. "To be totally clear, our policy has not changed," Madey said. "We didn't allow profiles to promote these kinds of activities before, and we still don't."

The moral of the story? Growth is ugly. Provide a way to network and connect, and you never know how use of your service is going to evolve. 

LinkedIn has an escort problem, and it's likely that they'll have other problems related to splinter groups they don't want broadly identified with their service. Tumblr, just acquired by Yahoo, is widely reported to have an adult content problem. Gotta be proactive related to killing that type of stuff if you're going to keep upselling corporations with recruiting accounts.

No word on whether the escort InMail response rate was higher or lower than that of Java Developers.  

On the plus side, even though lots of people found me this way, no one ever "reached" out.

CAPITALIST MAILBAG: What's the Most HRish Thing to Come Out of Boston?

Hey Capitalist/KD:

What's the most HRish thing to come out of the Boston tragedy? I'm betting you've got something to say about the media coverage...

Becka from Charlotte

------------------------------------

Hey Becka - 

Media coverage? Talking at length when you know nothing?  Sounds like HR, right?  Or maybe marketing... Hey now!

Actually, if we're talking about the media coverage, the most clairvoyant point in the whole thing is when Brian Williams pitched it to a local reporter, and, not knowing he was on national TV, had this to say about where he was at (email subscribers may need to click through for video):

"We don't know S###"

Which sounds like either the best or the worst HR pro in the world. You choose.  KD likey.  I'd promote that one to HR Director.

But the most HRish thing was all about reputation, influence and performance.  It involves someone who knows something about the performance of the brothers in question, kind of like a manager from another department who had run into the dumb### duo in a cross-departmental project in an office park near you.

Meet Uncle Ruslan! Who had this to say about his nephews: 

"You put a shame on our entire family -- the Tsarnaev family -- and you put a shame on the entire Chechen ethnicity," Tsarni said.

When asked what provoked the bombing suspects, the uncle stated: "Being losers, hatred to those who were able to settle themselves -- these are the only reasons I can imagine.

"Anything else, anything else to do with religion, with Islam, is a fraud, is a fake," Tsarni said.

Of course, anytime I hear someone call someone a loser, I automatically go to Beck, who penned this classic that was played at the end of every sporting event where the home team was winning through the 90's and early 2000s:

But I couldn't hear Beck come up when Ruslan was talking, because he was yelling - not as much because he was angry (although he probably was), but because the two helicopters you can hear in the background we're probably louder to him than they appeared on tape.

Want people to understand we're all more alike than different in your next diversity training module?  Play Uncle Ruslan. People who know talent know the deal.  Don't judge everyone that looks or sounds like these two - because they're losers.  

Uncle Ruslan would make a sweet Director of HR.  A Director of HR that doesn't tolerate fools and talks loudly because of the choppers circling his house, but a pretty straight-talking Director of HR nonetheless.    

onefundboston.org 

Employee vs. Associate: What Should You Call Your People?

Capitalist Note - had someone lecture me about the need to call people "associates" last week. I like that tag fine, but I told them the story outlined below. On my mind, so I'm rerunning the post.

Short answer: It doesn't matter, your actions are much more meaningful than the tag you use..

Short story.  I was a young up and comer in a Director-level position with a Fortune 500 back in the early 2000s - way more responsibility than my resume and age said I deserved.  I was at a national HR meeting - top 20 people in HR in the company, the corporate functional HR heads (comp, benefits, etc.) and all the field leaders.  I don't remember how it came up, but I offered up a cut and dry opinion that we shouldn't call our talent employees - we should be calling them "associates"...

And the Darth Vader of HR at the company (a great guy BTW) proceeded to absolutely assassinate me in front of the group with a 5 minute rant on why that was pure Bull#### (quote).

What he said, I later came to realize, was the truth.  If you're going to be cute with what you call employees, you better deliver on whatever promise you think you're making.  Additionally, you can just keep calling your people "employees" and do all the upstream stuff you think the other names indicate and you'll end up in the same place.  Without risking looking like a moron.

He was right.  He gave me a Nancy Kerrigan whack at the knees.  He later tried to promote me into a higher position in the West that would have required big relo.  I said no based on my gut about the division head I would have been working for.  7 months later Darth flew in and shut down the office I would have been leading from.  

Nothing but lessons from that guy.  Trust your gut when it comes to career.  And it doesn't make one ### worth of difference what you call the people who work for your company.  All that matters is how you treat them and what you've got planned for them.

Thanks Darth.

HR SLANG: "They've Gone Galt" (Ayn Rand Version)

The site is called the HR Capitalist, so it makes sense that some of the HR Slang we throw around has an Ayn Rand flavor.  The good news for you is that using HR Slang with an Ayn Rand twist makes you look smart to the capitalists who run your company.

Today's term - Going Galt:

Going Galt: (from urban dictionary) To follow the example of the character John Galt in the book "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand. A person who goes Galt is a productive member of society who decides to reduce his or her productivity in order to thwart the efforts of unproductive people to take the fruits of his or her labor.

Usage:

"I can't get ahead. My taxes go up every year." 
"Easy! Just go Galt."

So that's your official definition - you'll need that for context and the first part of the description to others about what the term means.  Here's your HR version:

Going Galt: (HR/Human Capital version) Occurs when an high performing individual contributor is so revolted by how his or her manager/company manages non-performers that they cease to give a s*** about giving discretionary effort and as Peter Gibbons once so profoundly stated, "work just hard enough not to get fired."

Usage:
"When are they going to do something about Bob?  Why should I work hard?

"I haven't seen you tinkering around with that new product idea.  What's up with that these days?"
"That's on the back burner.  Great ideas don't matter here, everyone gets the same thing.  I've gone galt."

Performance is flat in the org?  Chances are your best people have gone galt.

Dis pravda.

 

WINNING: It Takes Care of Everything at Your Company, Right?

You know the drill.  The killer sales rep has issues with the ladies, the bottle and/or his teammates.  Because he performs, all are encouraged to look the other way - until he doesn't perform, at which time it's "game on."  It's a reality that dates back to prehistoric times, when the caveman with a skill for slaying 2X the woolly mammoth of mortal cavemen was given "space" for his actions around the campfire.

Revenue producer? We've got patience for your "quirks".  Cost center? Get it together, because we can find other talent without the baggage to make the trains run on time.

Does winning cover up personal baggage at your company?  How could it not? 

But - your company doesn't put "winning" as one of it's core values.  You're smarter than that. Which is why it's so interesting that Nike put Tiger Woods up as public display #1 that winning solves everything.  See the picture below (email subscribers click through for the visual).

Here's a link to the news coverage of Nike's decision to quote Tiger and really make it a corporate position.  Interesting vibe in these articles and about what you would expect.

Everyone knows that winning takes care of everything.  A better path would have been a redemption theme, which everyone could have gotten their head around.  

I might have had even more fun with the Tiger backstory:

Big Letters: "867-5309"

Little Letters: "Jenny, Tiger's got your number"

The lesson - when writing marketing copy, don't let the high performer with baggage craft the narrative.  Maybe the professionals ought to handle that.

5 Things You Need to Make Everyone Hate Your Success (The Duke Haterade Primer)...

Capitaist Note: Duke is in the Sweet 16 and angling for another Championship.  How's that working for you?  I'm running this post from a few years back, because the teams I really wanted to follow this spring - Gonzaga and Ole Miss - are out. That leaves me with the boys from Durham.  I watched them last night in the second round and was... like.... meh....

I kid.  But I'm guessing that if you polled all the serious college basketball fans in America, you would find that around 80% hate Duke.  Just flat out hate them.  At one time, I didn't like Duke either, mainly because I thought they won because they usually had 8 high school All Americans, spread the floor and let the natural advantages they had dominate. It wasn't a complex thing for them to win.  I changed my mind and became a Duke fan awhile back, because I thought they were actually over-achieving based on the talent they had.  For those of you scoring at home, that makes me a "flip-flopper", or as the Duke haters like to say, a "scum-sucker".

Why do the masses hate Duke so much?  Here's one of the million primers from Cory Smith at the Samford Crimson:

"Let's start with one of the most obvious reasons that no one can explain, and that is the players and the coach. The coach with the last name spelled like a first generation Icelander that you have to wear an oversized retainer to pronounce. You know the players, too. JJ Redick, Bobby Hurley, Greg Paulus.

I have heard people say they do not like Duke's players because they are pasty white. I have a hard time with this one since I am of the Caucasian persuasion myself. I don't like Duke's players or Coach K because they come off as just plain smug. Much like most of the students accepted there, the players seem as though they think they are better than the opponents simply because they are at Duke. From Coach K's American Express commercial where he all but declares himself the Gandhi of college basketball to the look of disbelief on his and his players' faces when they are called for a foul while the victim crawls out of the third row of cameras, it is very clear that Duke loves Duke, and they cannot understand why everyone else doesn't as much as they do. That is with the exception of the media, namely Dick Vitale."

The Duke hate started me thinking about other teams and corporations that, over time, the masses love to hate.  You know the targets of this hate - it's sports teams like the Yankees, Duke and the Lakers, and corporations like Microsoft, Apple and yes Dorothy - even Google these days. 

These teams and companies are good at what they do and provide value, so why do people hate them?  Here's my the Capitalist list of the top five things you need to have in place to make people hate you as much as Duke or Microsoft:

1.  Lots of Sustained Success - Let's face it, it's not enough to win one title or launch one killer product.  No, you need to be successful for a long time - a decade seems to be a nice round number for starters.  Think about Microsoft, the Yankees and Duke - they all have success that's measured in decades, not single digit years.  You hate them because you're tired of seeing it.

2. A Leader That Gets So Much Press You Can't Help But Hate Them- Coach K and the American Express commercials.  Bill Gates back in the day.  Steve Jobs in the mock turtleneck - again. George Steinbriener in the luxury box with the Magnum P.I. shades.  These images, combined with the other factors, make us pray for an alternative to rise out of the ashes - and eject the golden franchise back to the pack - not for one year, but for eternity. 

3. Aggressive and Demonstrative Behavior Designed To Snuff Out the Competition and Keep Them On Top - Here's where it gets interesting.  You think all that success is easy to maintain?  Nope, in order to stay on top, you've got to be alert and ready to try and dismantle all comers - and everyone else is ALWAYS going to give you their best shot.  So, you do what champions do - you dig in, get aggressive and try aggressively to maintain your position.  For Microsoft, that meant embedding the browser in the operating system and killing Netscape.  For Duke, it means their guards are trying to get themselves ready to play by slapping the floor on defense (like nails on a chalkboard for all the Duke haters) or holding the follow-through on their shot for an extra two seconds.  You're on top, you compete to stay there.  Sometimes it looks really cocky.  Enter more hate...

4. Media Coverage of the Success and Culture - Apart from the press coverage of the Coach K and Bill Gates leader types, sustained success also brings one thing for sure - 24 hour coverage of the culture of the winning company/program.  That means at one point, we heard so much about the Redmond campus we could scream.  We hear so much about how the Duke program is different due to the academic mission of the University, we're rooting for the diploma mill instead.  America loves an underdog, and in the 24/7 media world, Microsoft, Apple and Duke are overexposed from a media perspective.  As a result, we hate.

5. The "They Only Win Because They're Rich" Objection - What follows sustained success?  Money.  Lots of Money.  So when Microsoft, Apple, the Yankees and Duke win, they've got resources to throw at problems and competitors.  If you're a Royals, Netscape or a NC State fan, what do you point to as the reason you can't get a win against the established power?  Money, dude.  We hate the winners because they're rich.  We're not. We're unlikely to be rich anytime soon.  HATE!

It's human nature to hate the winners - the BIG winners.  May your hate keep you warm in the winter of your career and help you raise your game.

Or you can just hate without regard to your own performance.  Either way is fine with me...

HR and Marketing: How the "Google to Indeed to Career Site" Food Chain Changes the Game...

I'm up over at Kinetix client iMomentous talking about the new math related to how candidates find your open positions in today's world, with a big hat tip to Bob Corlett.  Check it out:

"Let’s examine how much mobile really matters looking at some of the numbers shared by Bob Corlett in the Washington Business Journal.  You like numbers?  How about these numbers? (see references for Bob’s stats by visiting his blog at Staffing Advisors):

-Ten times more job seekers start their job search on Google than anywhere else.

-Indeed is now reported as the #1 source of hire for employers in the US.

-How did that happen?  Two out of three searches of any kind originate on Google. And Google job searches often lead job seekers to Indeed. Indeed has three times more unique visitors per month than the job boards.

-More than one out of every three minutes spent online is now spent “beyond the PC” on smart phones and tablets. Already 30 percent of Indeed’s total candidate visits are mobile. They encourage it.

-Only 4 percent of job seekers start their job search with a specific company in mind. So if your ads are not in the right place to be seen, you won’t be considered. And if somehow candidates do see your ad, 34 percent will not apply if your application process is too much of a hassle.

So, the call for a mobile-friendly careers site in recruiting is pretty clear.  The chain of command goes like this these days – Google to Indeed to Your Career Site, where a decision on whether to apply is made. At least one out of three candidates are doing that on a mobile device, so why wouldn’t you have a mobile-friendly site ready for mobile users?"

What do you need to differently with that in mind?  Other than thinking about the impact of mobile, you need to think like a marketer.  There's millions of things for a job seeker to read on the web when they fire up Google - so what makes your openings notable?

Probably nothing.  Which is why you need to put on your marketing hat and write better headlines and copy to your job postings.

The irony - job seekers give your job posting the same amount of time you give their resume as a recruiter - about 5 seconds.  If there's nothing compelling in there, why should they care?

They won't.  At least the right candidate won't.  Start thinking more like a marketer with your copy.

MORE PLEASE: On Making Your Job Postings Suck Less

The bar is so low people.  I know, I know.  You have legal requirements.  You're an EEO/AA employer. You've got standards.

All those are reasons you won't get outside the box. 

Fine.  Then keep your awful job description and spice it up on the front end to make people think you have a soul.  Here's a great example from MEC Labs in Jacksonville (which brought us legends like Limp Bizcut and Tim Tebow  Jacksonville, not MEC):

"Quick quiz: Why do you think most people buy a ticket to a Van Halen concert?

1. The pretty flashing lights
2. The delicious food at the concessions
3. The guy in the back who won’t stop yelling “Sammy Hagar was better!”
4. The content

You’re a pretty savvy job seeker, so we figure you know the answer to this one – it’s all about the content (although, you gotta admit, it was all downhill after David Lee Roth left)."

You're a big red tape machine. You can't write custom copy for job descriptions. You're worried about getting sued.

No excuse for you not to put some custom copy in the header and footer of your job descriptions (which goes global to all job descriptions), then change it out regularly.

The bar is low. All you have to do is try a little.  It's a zero expense item that can make you look like a great place to work, without spending the money I describe as necessary in this whitepaper.

h/t to Capitalist friend and reader JN.

CHECKLIST: Make Sure You Get the Company Twitter Password From Gen Y Early in Mass Layoffs...

You're going to have do layoffs at some point in the future - it's a reality.

In 2001, you delivered the news with compassion, took the time necessary and then went through the Exiting Employee Checklist.  You probably thought about who you needed to talk to in some order - by most difficult first, who you had to get out of the building, etc.

In 2013, you need to order the employees you need to layoff not by degree of difficulty, but by who has access to the company Twitter account.  If you don't factor in access to social media, you're going to find yourself in the situation British company HMV did, where the Gen Ys started live tweeting the layoffs before the company thought about shutting the account down.

See picture of tweet stream below.  It's a new day, people.  I'm out. 

I Like People Who Don't Suck - That's Why I'm Celebrating Paul Hebert Day...

Last year, a group of HR bloggers banned together to do a tongue-cheek-dedication to a guy named Tim Sackett.  It was basically a roast, designed to play off the fact that Tim works his ### off and can't ever make a list - best bloggers, best HR people to follow on Twitter, Top 5 Dads in his neighborhood - nothing.  If there's a list, Tim's not on it.  So we roasted him with his own day.

Flash forward a year to the day, and we're a little more serious, honoring someone we love and think you should know about - a guy named Paul Hebert from Greenville, SC.

Paul is a nationally known expert in influence, rewards, recognition, etc.  You get the vibe.  Check out his LinkedIn Profile here and his company website here.

But he's got his own day, and this year we're actually being serious. 

Which begs the question - why does Paul Hebert get his own day?  What makes him special?

Two things make Paul Hebert special in my eyes (having known him for 4+ years now):

1. He's constantly trying new things.  To be Paul Hebert means that you experiment with anything you think might have merit professionally.  Paul's older than me, and probably older than you.  Still, he's experimenting with things before anyone else.  I see this through the realm of his blog, social media and other forms of technology, but I'm sure it transfers into other areas of his life.  Paul is unafraid of things that are new.  Most of us have that fear.

2. Paul's a patient guy who meets people halfway. One of the things I love about Paul is that conversations are two-way.  He listens to you.  He responds to what you said with your feelings and position in mind. It's a two-way conversation, and yes - that's rare enough in today's world to be notable.

Today is Paul Hebert day.  I'm proud to call him a friend and a colleague in the game we call HR/Talent Management/Whatever the heck we're calling it today.  You should get to know him as well - check out his coordinates below:

• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Company Page
• Blog
• Fistful of Talent
• peestrong.com