EMPLOYMENT BRANDING MBA: Why Nobody Cares Whether YOU Like Your Alma Mater's Football Uniforms...

If you're a real college football fan, you probably caught the new Univerisity of Georgia uniforms this last weekend, pictured below and to the right and almost universally panned as "sucking".  More from the Birmingham News:

"When I first got to a TV set for the Georgia-Boise State game I thought the Galveston Gauchos of the Texas-Arkansas Indoor Arena Independent United League had joined the SEC. What ghastly uniforms. Listening alternately to the pregame shows on the Georgia and the LSU networks while leaving Auburn, there was much attention devoted to the uniforms Georgia and Oregon were wearing, as well as Boise's shoes.

The radio guys didn't do them justice, how ugly they were. Especially Georgia's. Somebody said, "They'll grow on you." So does fungus if you don't scrub the tub. So many traditionalists among the Georgia financial supporters, for whom the occasional move to silver britches was a jolt, surely this wardrobe choice won't well serve Mark Richt."

Of course, what all the old people (which is to say anyone who serves as a writer, commentator, or someone with enough influence for you and to be aware that they think these uniforms suck) are missing is the following:

The uniforms aren't for the old people.  The uniforms are for the young people.  They're about recruiting.  

Young people love stuff that old people hate - the more you hate them, old people, the better the recruiting advantage the uniforms are going to provide on the recruiting trail.  If you don't hate them with a passion, the school didn't go far enough.

Recruiting 101.  Think I'm joking?  The University of Oregon started this trend with the help of Nike. The more shock there is, the more 5-star recruits will be attracted to your brand, regardless if you've ever won or not.  More on the strategic plan of ugly uniforms at Oregon from Grantland:

"But back in Beaverton, the Nike designers did their part, using the Ducks program as part laboratory, part showroom.

Blocky, standard letters became sleek, modern fonts. Wings on the shoulders? Diamond designs on the knees? Silver shoes worn at Southern Cal? "Nothing," Nike creative director Todd Van Horne said, "is off the table." The paint for the dark green helmets was made with glass beads and cost $2,400 a gallon. There were fall fashion shows.

"They look hatched from an alien pod," Bachman wrote in the Oregonian, "sent to Earth to seek first downs and souvenir sales."

This, Michael Smith wrote in the SportsBusiness Journal, was part of "Nike's 15-year project to build Oregon football into a national power largely on the strength of marketing and branding."

Tradition? Tradition is great where it's a sellable, marketable commodity. Alabama can sell tradition. Penn State can sell tradition. Michigan can sell tradition. At those places, tradition is the differentiation, but at the schools where it's not? They have to go in the opposite direction. And no one has done that better, or more consciously, than Nike and Oregon, which for the purposes of this conversation are essentially one and the same.

Oregon's tradition at this point is the overtly embraced lack of tradition. Change.

"We wanted to be out there, to be purposely controversial," Hatfield told Smith. "That's a part of what we do that's not very well understood. A lot of the sports writers at first hated it" — fans, too, by the way, and still do — "and that's actually what we wanted. If you're purposely trying to stir up the nest and increase visibility, you want them saying something."

Nobody cares what you think about the uniforms.  If you're reading this blog, you're way too old to have an opinion that matters related to the branding of the unform of your alma mater.

You're the past.  The recruits are the future.  The uniforms will get uglier until we win a BCS championship.

Your job?  Keep buying tickets and making donations.  And shut up with your negative response to change, already...

Making Fun of Disney at HR Florida (#HRFL11)

Chill out Disney social media monitoring team.  There’s a backstory here.

Here’s the scene on Sunday from HR Florida in Orlando – I’m presenting as part of a workshop along with the talented Michael VanDervort, Ben Eubanks, Bryan Wempen and Victorio Milian.  The following question comes from the gallery:

Sharp lady from the Hospitality Industry in Orlando:  "Kris, I get what you’re saying.  We need to post jobs via social, got it.  How do we cut through the noise with all the other entities that are posting jobs in the hospitality industry in Orlando?" 

Me: Who’s your biggest competitor for talent in the area?

Sharp lady:  Duh!  Disney!

Me:  I’d start building a personality around your social media content that makes fun of Disney.

The crowd let out a collective groan/gasp.  You would have thought that I just dropped an F-bomb on someone who didn’t deserve it.

The reality, as I explained, is that simply posting jobs on social media properties isn’t enough.  Orlando’s a great case study for that.  Hospitality industry, everyone’s going after the same talent pool.  Everyone’s doing it the same way.  It’s hard to cut through the noise.  Everyone is posting jobs via social channels - it's become a commodity.

That’s why you have to have a content strategy and personality behind your brand.  Why would I want to work for you?

You’re like the other 50 employers.  You’re a commodity.  You're boring in that way.

But wait - You’re like the other 50, but you’re willing to tell me why you aren’t like Disney.  I’m now listening.

Disney is the 800-pound gorilla in this market.  Not everyone can work for Disney.  Lots of good people don’t want to work for Disney.  Fear of mice, past negative experience, whatever...

So be brave enough to tell them why you’re not like Disney.  I guarantee you that people will listen, mainly because everyone else is playing the “me-too” game to the guargantuan Disney brand.

"We’re like Disney, but a little bit smaller." 

No you’re not.  You’re Embassy Suites on International Drive in Orlando. The Embassy mothership has a lot of stuff going on other than helping you compete against your local competition.   Take responsibility for yourself and tell the local candidate pool why you aren't like Disney, how you're different.

Claim that space, and you’re on your way.

Bad HR Stock Photo of the Week...Capitalist Style...

Frank Roche over at KnowHR has a great series called "Bad HR Stock Photo of the Week", where he shares some AWFUL photos that are used in HR promotional materials.  Most of them are worse than clip art.

In the biggest hat tip I can give, I'm adding to Frank's stash of bad photos with these gems I picked up from an old WalMart employee handbook.  I should say that the cover is actual associates from back in the 80's, which is cool - using their own people - so this is inherently better than most that Frank profiles...

No truth to the rumor that's Larry Bird at 11am on the Handbook cover.  Greenbar inventory - check. Feathered hair, middle part - check.

But check out the "associate enjoying vacation" clip!  Nice!!!

Portability of Social Media Accounts: Here's Your Poster Child Example...

For the most part, I'm a "live and let live" kind of guy when it comes to the social media accounts of your employees.  I'm a believer in a limited social media policy that espouses common sense, and I believe that in this free agent nation, employees should own their own social media profiles and those profiles should be portable (meaning they should be able to take them with them to their next employer).

There's one big exception: When naming conventions of social media "handles" (think twitter account names) actually help your employees build a huge following.  Here's an example from Sirona Says, take a look and let's discuss after the break:

"Laura Keunssberg. She is an active Twitterer with over 62,000 followers. ITV said that they they considered these followers as an 'additional benefit' when going through the recruitment process.

This now brings a whole new dynamic to the phrase social recruiting, doesn't it?

But what about the legality?

While at the BBC her Twitter name was @BBCLauraK - clearly a representation of the BBC. When she left she changed the account name to @ITVLauraK.



The question is who 'owned' the account and the followers? Would she have built that following if she wasn't working for the BBC?"

For most of us, adding the company name to our twitter account in this fashion wouldn't make a huge difference.  I could go with "@KinetixKD" instead of "@kris_dunn" and it wouldn't make a huge difference in my Twitter following.

But for a correspondent of a huge news organization?  A couple of years of pitching "Follow Laura on Twitter @BBCLauraK" and boom - you're in the 10,000+ follower range, which actually becomes a marketing channel at that point.

For the BBC to walk away from that channel when Laura had a willingness to give it up?  That clearly shows the BBC doesn't know what they're doing with social.  They could have taken the account and plugged the next correspondent into it and boom - they're still rolling with that marketing channel and micro news outlet.

I coach people from time to time in companies that the naming covention outlined above - @BBCLauraK - is the way to go if you want to protect yourself from portability after investing in social media.  You use that naming convention (company first, employee name second) and set the clear expectation with the employees working the account that it's part of their job, and the company - not the employee - owns the presence.  Then, if they leave, you rename the account and play on.

Interesting example of the portability issue here.  If social is a big part of your strategy, it's time to think about naming conventions for accounts and setting clear expectations on ownership.

The Worst VP of HR in the World? Fortune Reports, You Decide...

Let me state from the start that I don't know this person.  I'm simply going to use excerpts from Fortune give you some cliff notes on HR pros behaving badly.  It's not often that the majority of an major business magazine article is focused on the destruction and ill will caused by a wayward HR Pro.  More from the Fortune magazine article on the fall of Pfizer CEO Jeff Kinder, go read the whole thing for a good business story:

"Perhaps the only thing as destructive to Kindler as his inability to trust his colleagues was the one Pfizer executive in whom he did place his trust: Mary McLeod. The head of human resources under Kindler, McLeod would leverage her relationship to the CEO to become both his emissary and a power in her own right. Kindler's loyalty to her would undercut him at a crucial moment. McLeod, 51 when she joined Pfizer, had an unusual career trajectory. She had started as a dental hygienist before going back to school and pursuing a career in human resources. She had worked with GE Capital, Cisco (CSCO), and Charles Schwab (SCHW). She was a no-nonsense type who seemed to relish difficult environments.

(My notes appear like this.  So far so good.  Up from the ranks, loves tough environments...)

Her tenure at Schwab had ended disastrously, though there's no sign Kindler knew that when he brought McLeod in. As Schwab's head of HR and chief of staff to CEO David Pottruck in the early 2000s, McLeod had proved toxic, according to six members of Pottruck's executive team. They say she isolated him from other points of view and went to extraordinary lengths to remove rivals. Meanwhile she criticized him behind his back and bragged that she had the CEO under her thumb.

(OK and preferred to have your CEO's back - but you can't have it both ways.  You can't be close and then talk smack about him to others)

After an internal investigation, Pottruck fired McLeod in 2004, he confirms. In an e-mail sent to McLeod the day of her termination, read aloud to Fortune, Pottruck wrote: "The issues are about the perceptions others have of you around character, integrity and divisiveness … There is a perception that you do not tell the truth."

(Um..Yeah... His investigation turned up six stories of the HR head talking smack about him behind his back.  That's called "for cause" and "with malice" when you get fired by your CEO).

Nine days later, Pottruck himself was gone, forced out by the board over strategic differences. The McLeod situation, says one executive, "affected his credibility dramatically." Says Pottruck, who still sounds stung years later: "Why purposely undermine me and our entire team? Mary's behavior and motivations are hard to understand, even to this day." McLeod says Fortune'saccount of her time at Schwab is "false" but declines to offer any specifics, noting that she is bound by a confidentiality agreement with the company.

(The firing came too late.  He was already damaged goods with the rest of the senior team, and odds are, it had made its way all the way to the board.  You have to wonder what was different about the reports to Pottruck that made him pull the trigger and do the investigation - a board member probably told him about the rumors, at which point he believed it)

McLeod managed to rebound from her firing and make her way back up the corporate ladder. By the time she became Pfizer's HR chief in early 2007, the company was preparing for wholesale layoffs. McLeod's job was critical.

Although she moved rapidly to shrink the bloated HR group, McLeod seemed uninterested in the details of how the streamlined department would actually function. Even top deputies say she was virtually unapproachable, preferring to communicate by e-mail and quarterly videocast.

(Videocast to the field HR team!  Nice!  It would have been really cool if she could have got a personal hologram ala Star Wars)

McLeod's primary focus was the care and feeding of the CEO. She became Kindler's protector and surrogate, whispering in his ear, controlling access to him, delivering his blunt messages. Kindler admiringly called her "Neutron Mary," after his hero, Jack Welch. McLeod seemed to encourage his harshest nature, telling him, according to a person who was present, that one senior executive was "a B player," another too ambitious, someone else a "crybaby."

(I'm guessing the reference check didn't happen in this case.  3rd party search and everyone assumes someone else ran the background check and called Pottruck?  Only the shadow knows)

McLeod also publicly denigrated her employees, announcing at one town hall meeting in 2008 that two big positions would have to be filled from outside because no one inside Pfizer was capable of doing the job. Another episode, in which one of McLeod's lieutenants unsuccessfully attempted to make an outside consultant turn over so-called 360° reviews of Pfizer's top brass -- which were intended only for the executives' personal development, not to assess performance -- fed paranoia in the senior ranks. Says a former Pfizer HR exec: "There were a lot of comments to the effect of 'What is Jeff thinking?' Everybody questioned his judgment." (McLeod would not discuss any events at Pfizer, citing a confidentiality agreement with the drug company.)

(360 degree review in the secret closet!  Must... use...power...for bad good)

Even as McLeod alienated staffers with her behavior, she was attracting notice for her perks. McLeod had negotiated a special deal, personally approved by Kindler and later ratified by the Pfizer board. First, she received a $125,000 cost-of-living adjustment to compensate for moving to the New York area from her home in Delaware (while getting another $238,000 to cover a loss on the sale of a second home she owned on Long Island).

But McLeod didn't move -- at least not anytime soon. Instead, she began traveling back and forth regularly on a company helicopter from Delaware to Manhattan. Under Pfizer policy, top executives such as McLeod were entitled to business travel on company aircraft and 20 hours of free personal use each year of both jets and helicopters. But McLeod's employment agreement, signed by Kindler, was more generous. It allowed her to commute on a "weekend" basis between Delaware and Manhattan for a three-month period starting in April 2007. When McLeod failed to move to New York during that period, Kindler extended the deal through the end of 2007. Ultimately, even after buying a house in New Jersey, she continued using company helicopters for business travel into and out of Delaware until she left the company.

(HR Directors in the field:  Stop whining that you can't use Marketing's souped up Prius.  It's obvioius from this account you can't handle the responsibility)

Apart from the terrible impression conveyed by an HR chief choppering to work in the midst of massive layoffs, someone soon realized that this arrangement posed another problem: McLeod's emoluments were so lavish they might make her one of the company's five most compensated employees, which would require Pfizer to disclose the details in its annual proxy statement. In early 2008 company governance chief Peggy Foran investigated the issue and tallied nearly $1 million in payments to McLeod, including those relating to her various houses, the helicopter use, and a large bonus to buy her out of a consulting partnership. Then there was McLeod's salary and regular bonus of $900,000 and restricted stock and options.

The prospect of revealing those details was disturbing for the board, which had been pilloried for McKinnell's severance package. Foran and Kindler were called before an executive session to discuss the aviation policy. The compensation committee reviewed McLeod's package in detail before ratifying Kindler's approval of exceptions to Pfizer's compensation policies. Ultimately Pfizer concluded that it did not need to disclose McLeod's pay.

Still, rumors of McLeod's perks spread around the company. Word also leaked to Pharmalot, an industry blog, and a cartoon circulated on the web showing a sinking Pfizer ocean liner and a helicopter hovering overhead. Asks the pilot: "Ms. McLeod, are you ready to head home?"

(Yes, that's true.  The board realizes things must be out of whack when they almost have to report her as one of the five earners in the company per SEC regulations.  No truth to the rumor that she was behind the scenes negotiating for the GOP in the 2011 Debt Ceiling crisis.  She's good, but probably too pricey for K street)

And I'm out...

Here's the Money Quote of the Day to Impress Your CFO (or Friends In Finance)...

Don't act like you don't need it, HR.  You want me on this wall, you NEED me on this wall.

Here's a quote to get your friends in Finance chuckling and then quoting something you said repeatedly on and off for the next year:

"Costs are like fingernails.  They grow organically and must be cut regularly."

Boom.  You're welcome.

Quote comes to you from my travels this week, from an organization that - let's just say - values fiscal responsibility...

You think it sounds hokey?  That's OK, use it playfully (I'd use it in the voice of Carl from Caddyshack) to lighten the mood so the Finance folks don't think you're taking yourself too seriously.

Deliver this one right, and they'll quote you - HR - often.  That seems like a good place to be with kids from Finance.

HR: Like Sales, But Without the Commission...

Quick: Take a look at the picture to the right...

What is it?  OK, I know that it's numbers, Einstein... What do the numbers  represent?

If you said a sales funnel, have a free subscription to Jessica Lee Writes and Deadspin, on me... That's how I roll...

The point?  There's something universal about the concept of the sales funnel.  So universal, in fact, that I think it can be applied to almost any job in the world.  You do activity to get results.  You know that not all of your activity is going to be successful, but you also know that repetition is part of the process.  You also know that you can limit the amount of dead repetitions by being smart about what you do in each stage of the funnel.

Let's look at my chart in the picture.  These were some scribbles in a conference room at DAXKO last year, where I was meeting with a VP to discuss an open position in their organization.  The top represents the total number of applicants or sourced candidates.  Moving down, you've got the total number of phone screens I did from that pool, the total number of live interviews to date (with a question to the side - I could bring in 2-3 more that would compare favorably, but do we need to?), with a "1" at the bottom of the funnel to represent the ultimate hire.  The only question now is whether the VP wants to see more candidates when she has two she really likes.  Because I work with great people, she said she only wants to see them if they can compete with the 2 she likes (yes! right answer!).

2 main points to close this post:

1. Almost everything in HR can be broken down to the equivalent of a sales funnel.  Don't believe me?  Take employee relations.  We work on issues and cases (the top of the funnel) and apply our process to resolve issues as you move down the funnel.  What's at the bottom of the employee relations funnel?  Probably getting sued, my friends.  If you've been in the game long enough, you have an idea how many cases it takes before your company is sued, even if you're working your value-added process.  (Allegations are free and anyone can sue - It's America!!) 

2. To be a player in HR, you need to know the numbers in the funnel without having to look them up.  I'm close enough to the position in question where I know my numbers.  That's good, but I'm not perfect.  I can't tell you what the numbers were for the last AE jobs I closed.  Shame on me, that means I have room to improve, because I'm not the HR cyborg I thought I was.

HR.  It's like Sales, but without the commission.  At least for the true players...

Here's How HR Would Look If It Was Owned By "The Ladders"...

Some of you know who The Ladders is, some of you don't...

For the uninitiated, The Ladders is a job board/portal/service for companies who are trying to fill 100K+ jobs and the candidates seeking those jobs.  They charge both sides - the company for posting jobs and the candidate for subscribing to the service (appx. $35 monthly).  Lots of people in the HR industry don't like the Ladders.  The haters (I know -  affectionate term - but it's descriptive, right?) don't like the fact that the Ladders charges the job seeker, and there's been lots of questions about whether all their jobs are 100K+, whether they scrape jobs from employer sites without their permission, etc.

With all that in mind, here's one thing that's undeniable about The Ladders:  They never stand still, and they're never satisfied with the status quo.  Case in point - they just launched a premium service that guarantees a 100K+ job for $2,400, or the job seeker gets their money back.  This is more of the same from the Ladders, as they've had at least 3 major product offering launches in the last year.  You can read more about what we've written on The Ladders at the HR Capitalist and Fistful of Talent here and here.  Be sure to read the comments, because the detractors are there.

But all the activity from The Ladders in the last year has made me ask an important question:

What would HR look like if it was run by The Ladders?  Here's how the HR function would change if The Ladders was running the shop:

1.  HR would hire a bunch of smart people and then figure out what they were going to produce once they were in the door.  Go to The Ladders HQ, and it's obvious they've attracted a bunch of smart people, and I'm not sure they knew what the strategy was when they hired them. But they figured it out.

2. HR would focus on product, not process.  The focus would be on the following word:  Ship. The Ladders does 3 or more product launches a year.  Let's just say if The Ladders were running the HR shop, there would be new product being rolled out quarterly - a new leadership development tool, a different way to look at career pathing, etc. - it would be heavily branded and launched, or you and I wouldn't be there.

3. HR would market itself and not apologize for it. The Ladders could safely be called the PT Barnum of the Human Capital space, with apologies to SuccessFactors CEO Lars, who seems to have quieted down in the past couple of years.  If the Ladders ran HR, HR would forego one HR Director position in the budget and hire a Director of HR Marketing.

4. The marketing of HR product would be heavily branded and aggressively marketed to both the managers HR supports and Employees/Candidates Like The Ladders, HR would use that marketing position and market to both sides of the table - the company managers and employee/candidates.  Solutions would be marketed in different ways depending on who you were.

5.  HR would think more about owning eyeballs and how to monetize those eyeballs. The mantra wouldn't be "we should really do something with a managerial development track", HR would see the opportunity, cook the product, sign employees up and then come to managers with leverage - "I've got 83 of your 200 employees signed up for this program.  Want to speak to them?  What?  You didn't know we were doing that?  That's what you rely on us for, so we just did it..."

6.  People would still hate HR if The Ladders ran the function, but for different reasons. Lots of people hate HR now, and they still would under The Ladders - but for different reasons.  People dislike HR now because they think it's too administrative, it blocks them from doing things, it's lame, etc.  If The Ladders ran HR, some people would still hate us, but they'd hate us because we were doing lots of stuff - without asking for permission, without patting folks on the head and most importantly, because we were marketing our product across the organization and to the outside world better than the Marketing department could.

That's what would happen if The Ladders ran HR.  I don't know if that kind of HR is what you want, but there's no question it would be different.

Oh yeah - if The Ladders was running HR, there would be about 50% annual turnover in everyone's HR department for about 3 years until it settled in at 20-25%.  

Is that good or bad?  I'll let you decide.

Situational Fluency - If You Can't See Yourself In This Picture, You Can't Be An Authority

Can you see yourself in the picture above?  If not, you probably can't do what it takes to be an authority in Talent Management, Human Capital, Human Resources Management or whatever the hell we're calling it these days.

Background of two events I participated in last week that got me thinking along those lines:

1. Presentation and Workshop in Omaha: I did a presentation and workshop in Omaha this week entitled, "How to Raise Your HR Game By Thinking Like a Money-Hungry VP of Sales".  The concept was that HR pros can learn a lot from Sales pros.  When we were starting the workshop, I purposefully was animated in pulling chairs from the audience and setting them up on stage.  The workshop audience knew what that meant - Someone was going up on stage to display the skills we were going to cover.  You would have thought I was asking them to come up and beat a dog.  

2. Plateau Software panel on Authority on Talent:  I participated in a panel that asked the question, should and can HR ever be the "Authority on Talent"?

My take at the intersection of my experience in these two events this week:  Unless an HR pro can go up on a stage in front of their peers and display a skill that's in their wheelhouse, they won't be able to perform the skill and deliver the knowledge in a pressure-packed situation that's real.  At least not to the level that everyone expects when they talk about "great HR".

Translation:  Most won't be the authority they want to be if they're unwilling to stretch themselves from a "performance on command" perspective.  Life's a stage, and if you really don't want to do a simple role play on stuff in your knowledge area, you won't perform up to par when the ammo is real and people have high expectations.

My friend Ed Newman called this "Situational Fluency" on our panel on Thursday.  When Ed was building his last business and looking for consultants, he looked for people he thought could display the ability to go into any situation without knowing what was coming and not only survive, but thrive.

That takes command.  That takes presence.  It also takes situational fluency, which is basically going into a professional form of improv and knowing that you can thrive - with a combination of technical knowledge, confidence and yes, acting skills.

Life is improv.  So's HR.  Get on the stage if you want to be an authority to people outside of HR.

White Guys Screaming at the Camera in Unrestrained Rage = Company Website Gold....

Suit and tie.  Check.

Diverse set of employees looking like they're thinking about the 5-Year strategic plan.  Check.

White guys screaming at the camera in unrestrained rage.

Hold up...

How many boring pictures can you put on your corporate website related to employees?  Most of us plug in some stock photos and that's it.   We take zero chances and we get what we deserve - a site that makes us look like 100,000 other employers.  Add a boring job description with 100 essential job duties and congrads - no one can tell you from the accounting firm down the street.

What if you did something different?  Think that would interest candidates related to your employment brand?

Take a look at the two photos below.  Which company would you be quick to click through to?

If it's me, I gotta know who the company is that let the white guys scream at the camera and put it on their site.  White guys are beside the point, diversity would be great as well.  Entertain me.  Make me care.  

Passion and personality is required.  Check out the guys at Talent Anarchy related to the last picture because they're interesting, and straight outta Compton Omaha.