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.

A DEEPER QUESTION: How to Measure Passion in an Interview...

You want candidates who are passionate about what they do for a living, don't you?

Of course you do. But passion for a profession is tough to get a grip on.  Find out whether the people you are interviewing have passion for what they do (or are simply paying the bills) through some of the following interview strategies:

1. Ask candidates how they stay up to date in their field.  If you see a glut of reliance on professional training and formal activities that happen in company time, you're probably not dealing with passion.

2. Ask a candidate to give you a big question in their field they'd like to solve and why. Ask them what they've done related to starting to figure out the answer.  Probe hard on the answers they give.  See any creativity?  You might have passion.  See lots of glittering generalities?  That's fake passion. 

3. Ask a candidate how they find others in their profession to connect with, and how often they connect with others in their field outside their company.

What do they talk about?  What type of information is exchanged? How have those connections helped them?

4. Ask Motivational Fit questions - When have your been most satisfied in your work at Company X?  Least Satisfied? If the answers show a consistent theme of talking about BS factors rather than a clear line towards being able to do interesting work related to their field, it's hard to project them as passionate in their field.

And no Skippy - passion for something that's not work related doesn't count for you as an interviewer - it's nice to know you run marathons, but it has no impact on things that emulate from passion for the profession - continuous improvement, innovation, etc.  It does tell me you're not going to cost a lot for healthcare, though.  Thanks!

Start asking questions that give you line of sight for professional passion on your candidates. No fake passion or passion that doesn't produce results.

Or just keep looking for people that want to make the donuts and go home.  

BENCHMARK YOUR RECRUITING PRACTICE - A Great Offer for HR Capitalist Readers...

If you're in HR, you know how hard it is to get data and metrics on where you stand with any part of your Talent Practice without spending money.  Sure, you can go get some SHRM data off the national site, but good luck with putting it in context.  I get emails all the time from organizations like that telling me the average employee turnover in Alabama is 11%.  Which is - how should I say this - wishful thinking.  Wishful thinking designed to get me to click through and buy some enhanced data, but wishful thinking nonetheless.

That's why I'm excited to introduce a quality, cost-free option to readers of the HR Capitalist from a company I've become familiar with called APQC - The American Productivity & Quality Center.  I first met the APQC team when I led an HR Consulting engagement for Kinetix at their Houston headquarters.  I got to know the team and the business they're in, part of which includes benchmarking and best practices for HR practices at companies across the United States.

They help companies understand best practices in the world of HR.  They do the same for other functional areas, like Finance and Supply Chain Management, but let's face it - you and I are most interested in the HR Stuff.  At the heart of their business, APQC's model is to be a really strong research shop where they provide data and best-practice insights to members of APQC.

But you're a reader of the Capitalist - that means you're special.  With that in mind, here's an joint offer from APQC and the HR Capitalist with a basic trade in mind - if you take 30 minutes of your month to collect data you probably already have on your recruiting function and input that data into an online survey tool, APQC is going to reward you by provided you with a slick Benchmark Report that shows you where you stand in your peer group - sliced by company size (revenue), industry, etc.

Data you'll get back for participating in the benchmarking study includes:

• Total Cost of the Recruiting Process Per New Hire
• Recruiting Outsourced Cost as a Percent of Total Recruiting Process Costs
• First-Year Retention Rate (by Job Position Level)
• Cycle Times for:
  • Identified need to approved job requisition
  • Approved job requisition to acceptance of job offer
  • Acceptance of job offer to new hire begins

In addition to those valuable metrics, APQC is also going to include some really cool stuff if they get enough data - testing some hypothesis to see if certain practices (like outsourcing, use of social media, etc.) have an impact on the cost, cycle time, and productivity measures of the recruiting process.

It's a great way to get some insight on how you're doing with your recruiting function by partnering with a great research firm in a way that doesn't cost you thousands of dollars.  One of the great things about participating in research like this with a company like APQC is that the metrics are defined - time to fill, annualized turnover, etc.  The report you get will be a valid comparison across all companies in the survey.

The HR Capitalist isn't compensated in any way to market this to you.  I just like the team at APQC and access to the database they have isn't cheap, so we crafted an exchange/barter offer that makes sense - you give some data on one company and help grow the already strong APQC database, you get data back from hundreds of other companies like yours that helps you benchmark how you're doing in a way that you haven't had time, or possibly budget, to do.

GET STARTED ON THE APQC BENCHMARKING SURVEY BY CLICKING HERE

CAPITALIST WEBINAR: The Ultimate Guide to Mobile Recruiting (You Need This)

OK - Tough love first.  Regardless of the size of your company, you need to get moving to figure out a mobile/smartphone strategy for your careers site - seriously.  

Why do you need to do that?  Check out the new math I shared recently related to how candidates find your open positions in today's world, with a big hat tip to Bob Corlett.  Check it out:

-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?

One reason you might not have a mobile version of your careers site is that you don't know where to start.  That's why I'm bringing in Fistful of Talent's Jason Pankow (Microsoft, Mariners fan) to help me do a webinar entitled FOT’s Ultimate Guide to Mobile Recruiting, brought to you by the mobile sages at iMomentous.  Join Jason and me (KD) next Wednesday, April 24th at 1pm ET and we'll cover the following:

• A survey of the mobile recruiting landscape and the factors driving the need for HR and recruiting professionals to develop their mobile recruiting strategy.
• Mobile site vs. Native App? FOT tackles the great debate, presenting scenarios of how each fit into your mobile recruiting strategy.
• The five keys to enhancing your mobile recruiting strategy by capitalizing on features like quick apply, SMS, social media and QR codes.
• The ultimate checklist for selecting your mobile recruiting vendor, including the top questions you need to ask when vetting potential vendors.
• How to go beyond the optimized screen to attract top talent to your organization by incorporating video content and thought leadership into via your mobile recruiting strategy.

We even incorporate a Tommy Tutone reference, because let's face it, 867-5309 is the most famous mobile number ever - even if it wasn't a mobile number back in the day.

Register for FOT’s Ultimate Guide to Mobile Recruiting webinar today!

Stuff the Capitalist (aka KD) Likes: Enterprise Rent-A-Car

Who am I?  Who cares?  Good questions.  It's my site, so I'm going to tap into Fridays once in awhile by telling you more about who I am - via a "Stuff I Like" series.  Nothing too serious, just exploring the micro-niche that resides at the base of all of our lives.  Potshots encouraged in the comments.

I'm on the road a lot.  It's all glory and rock star stuff out there, right?  No.  It's a grind you hope to get through without catching the bird flu from the guy from China who sneezed next to you at Houston Hobby.  Survive and advance.

You know what makes the road a little more tolerable?  Enterprise Rent-A-Car.  Here's why they're on the list:

1. The recruiting strategy.  OK, this one is bad for the old folks. Enterprise doesn't hire anyone but young people.  I think their college recruiting program is bigger than all the Division 1 programs put togehter - across all sports.  Before you think that's a bad thing, see the other reasons I like them.

2. Energy and a plan to get you in and out - Enterprise has a personal greeting model, where someone comes out from behind the desk and gets you out of there.  That takes energy and focus, and they're pretty good at it.

3. The gift of gab.  All the Enterprise kids have the ability to build dialog with you without it being forced.  Compare that to the hourly folks at the counters of the other providers - it's night and day.  You either want to feel like you interacted with someone who gives a #### or you don't.  I get that sometimes we simply want a transaction with no smart talk, but these folks are good at the gab.

4.  The right way to upsell.  See #3.  They just weaved an upsell attempt into their dialog focused on whatever pop culture event they were talking about.  I said no, but nice attempt.

5.  It's great to recruit from people like Enterpirse.  I can't say that I've ever made a bad hire - either for myself or the clients of Kinetix - when we've grabbed someone with more than 2 years of experience from Enterprise.  In addition, every time I rent from them it reminds me how targeting companies with great approaches to recruiting is a winning strategy.

The road sucks.  Maybe you just want a transaction without a soul- who could blame you? But if you want to see how a recruiting strategy plays into service, Enterprise is the place to go.

PS - The Chinese guy told me he knew a family who was impacted by bird flu.  Perfect.  I'm sure Vincent Chase/Matt Damon and I have the same set of experiences on the road.

(PSS - the list of stuff I've profiled in this series: The NBA, middle tier options, Taco Bell, Diet Mt Dew, the Fat Guy dancing with the Mighty Mightly Bosstones, Adidas, Rage Against the Machine, Panera Bread, Venti Mild with a Gatorade chaser, the Goldfinger Channel on Pandora.  #hanginginAmerica)

If I Had a Few Million Dollars - I Would Still Aggregate References of Candidates...(updated, V2)

More than two years ago, I wrote a post outlining a freaking gold mine of top candidates that no one ever has a strategy for - the references of the people you hire each year.  Think about the quality and the automatic vetting that is present with most references - it's mind-blowing.

But we generally do nothing with those leads (they're GlenGarry, BTW).  Here's what I wrote back in the day:

"What's the big deal?  If you think about it, you'll agree that references are an underutilized resource of candidate flow for key positions in your company.  Let's think about references and what they bring to the table:

1.  A trusted pool of professionals, so much so the candidate is willing to make them a part of their personal brand.

2.  Often have served as mentors for the candidates who have cited them as references.

3.  Usually bring greater experience to the table than the candidate who cited them.

4.  Known to be "stable", meaning the citing candidate knows they're going to be around for awhile.

5.  Self selected by the candidate pool for their communication skills.  They'll be expected to pop a 2 minute elevator speech on demand about the candidate in question, and this is who the candidate selected for that task.  Have any jobs where you need a filter for the ability to communicate on the phone or via email?  Ever come to the conclusion that people who can communicate can also generally perform at a high level?

Flash forward to the present day.  While there are multiple great referral solutions like Zao in the marketplace, I'm not familiar with any reference solutions that have helped people like you and me capture the gold candidates presented to you as references.  Until now - SkillSurvey, a high end reference solution that helps people extract meaningful data on candidates beyond the traditional reference check, has a new product called "The Q".  Here's how they describe it:

"It's a known fact that strong candidates know strong performers.  The Q℠ is a new talent portal that allows you to take advantage of this valuable - and ongoing - source of talent by turning references into candidates. 

With their permission, a references' contact information is automatically captured in The Q℠, giving you a way to stay in touch and approach references as the need to fill jobs arises in the future.  It works because those leads already have a connection to your organization; they've asked you to stay in touch and are predisposed to receive your call or emails."  

Pretty cool.  This isn't a sponsored post and I'm not getting paid.  I just wanted to follow up on my post and acknowledge that someone has a solution for this.

Skeptical?  Multiple your number of hires last year X3, then think about the quality level of those people.  Think there are some great people to hire in there?  They're in the markets your candidates are in.  If you don't hire them, think they might be great sources for referrals?  After all, someone they know and like went to work for you - unless you screwed that up already, they're inclined to help.

I'd start looking at this as a place to innovate.  Glengarry leads, my friends.

5 Strategies to Keep Your Referral Program F.R.E.S.H.

Check it out via the slides - from a Fistful of Talent presentation I did with Tim Sackett.

Keep it fresh people. (email subscribers click through for slide goodness)

Referral Programs: 5 Fresh Ideas from Kris Dunn

Hit me on email or in the comments with questions.  It's all about you at the Capitalist.

CAPITALIST WEBINAR: 7 Ways to Get Real With Your Employee Referral Program...

There's two realities when it comes to Employee Referral Programs in most of our companies:

1.  It's widely accepted that one of the best sources of hire is the employee referral.

2.  HR pros market and position their Employee Referral Programs more like ACME than Apple.  We're not effective marketers for the most part, and it shows in the results of our employee referral programs.

It's the marketing piece that's key to Employee Referral Programs, and you know you need a marketing boost when you look up and your team finds themselves dealing with the following related to referrals:

1. Too many B and C Players - One of the biggest problems with referral programs (especially those that pay employees to refer) is that employees with questionable networks are often the most active.  That means you have Duds -  Lots of Duds - being referred.

2. You have way too much referral flow from a certain college/university or company.  It's like the Cornell Mafia example described here (click on the link).  An over-reliance on hiring only people from your school/company of choice means you're dating your cousin.  Again, nothing against developing a referral pipeline, but watch the feedback loop when you have a referred candidate from your favorite college/company going up against an outsider.  Are they picking the known entity for firm, or soft reasons?  Can you hear the banjos playing in the background?

3.  Your top performers don't refer anyone - The most important people to your referral program are your top performers.  They're the ones who know other stars in their areas of expertise.  Too often, it's crickets from the high performing group when you make the call for referrals.  But the group who's on a performance improvement plan?  Active as hell in giving you referrals.  Hmmmm.

All of these realities are why the gang over at Fistful of Talent (my other site) is ramping up our March webinar entitled The SuperFriends: 7 Strategies to Get Your Superhero Employees to refer Their Arch Nemesis! (Wednesday, March 27th, 1pm EST).  Click the link to register! 

Here's what you get if you join Tim Sackett and KD for the webinar (sponsored by the cool folks at Zao):

• Seven surefire ways to engage your best employees and increase referrals (while ensuring your employees don’t refer SuperDuds!)
• How to develop an internal communication strategy for your employee referral program.
• The keys to sustaining your program long-term.
• How and why trends like gamification can lead to better employee referral results.
• The top three reasons 99% of employee referral programs fail and how you can make sure your employee referral program is delivering the goods all year long.

The title really says it all.  While referrals from the masses worked out well for America ("give me your tired.. how 'bout some huddled masses..), you want referrals from the superheros at your company.  

Your Superheros are the ones with the networks that matter.  We'll dig into how to get them to refer other superheros to you on Wednesday, March 27th, at 1pm EST with our webinar The SuperFriends: 7 Strategies to Get Your Superhero Employees to refer Their Arch Nemesis! Click the link or hit the form below to register (email subscribers - click through to see form or just hit the link)! 

See you there.

How Do You Tell If Someone Has the Ability to Innovate?

Loaded question for sure.  Let's think about this one out loud.

You're hiring for what you want in your culture.  You say you have a culture of innovation and thus, want to hire someone with the ability to innovate.  You could make the mistake a lot of people make and do the following:

-Ask them to tell you about a time they innovated to solve a business problem, or 

-Think that only certain types of people have the ability to innovate, that it takes high energy to innovate, etc.

Don't get me wrong - I'm a behavioral interviewer, so the fact you're asking for examples is good.  The problem is that most of us won't dig deep enough on those behavioral questions.  We'll accept answers that sound great without really digging in.  Were they really in charge of the innovation?  Were they just part of a team?  What happened after they innovated?  Did it work?  Is it innovation if nothing really changed as a result?  

Interviewing is hard and false positives are everywhere - especially when it comes to factors like innovation.

For me, you really need help to figure out if someone has the ability to innovate.  Start with how they view the world.

How do you do that?  I've used an assessment that talks about "Rules Orientation".  People who are high rules actively look for the operations manual on the shelf when they're dealing with issues.  Doesn't matter what they're annual salary is, high rules people want to be told what to do.  As you might expect, you really can't expect a high rules person to have a jones for innovation.  They're looking for the Ops Manual, people...

Low Rules people, on the other hand, cringe at the thought of having to comply with a ops manual.  Low Rules people love the chaos, and they want to be the one to figure out what to do given a specific set of circumstances.  They'll help you build the ops manual, but you better have another challenge for them once it's built, because they'll refuse to be managed by that manual, or have a job that could be handled by that low level of protocol.

In addition to Rules Orientation, add a couple of other factors - cognitive processing speed and assertiveness - and I think you've got a pretty good platform for having directional information on whether someone has the capacity to innovate.  

And no, someone simply using a Mac rather than a PC doesn't mean they're an innovator. Trendy? Yes.  Jeans over khakis means little as well.  

You laugh, but you'd be surprised the factors people include in their head to measure the ability to innovate.  

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.