HRM Direct Talent Management Blog (9)

Tod Hilton's Living in the Real World

Jul 14, 2006 9:19:00 AM

For this week's Recruiting.com Blogswap I am pleased to introduce you toTod Hilton, a developer at Microsoft. Tod says he's neither a recruiter or hiring manager, but that's beside the point because recruiting is the one function in a company in which every person can play an important role. So without further ado, here's Tod:

I was reviewing Colin's previous posts while preparing to write this one. I have to say that he has some interesting opinions and I enjoyed what I read, but this post in particular, Put Your Kids to Work Day, really rung true for me.

A Good Conversation Indeed

Posted by Colin Kingsbury

Jul 13, 2006 2:10:00 PM

I have picked the occasional bone with John Sumser but as I hope I've made clear, I kid out of respect. Which is why I was flattered to receive this response to my recent critique of one of his daily articles. John says,

While that is very entertaining, the point we were making is that Jobby represents a generational difference, not an overnight sensation.

On that I could't agree more. Resumes are problematic to say the least, a "legacy format" if ever there was. But before we get too excited, it's worth considering this excerpt from the original article

The other day we visited a relatively new entrant to the recruiting software space. We tried to get them talking about Jobby. "Hmmm, this is very bad." They said. How do you control it? People could spam the system.

The more I think about this, the more I sympathize with the point of view given by the vendor.

The problem with resumes is that they are an unstructured document containing structured data. Unstructured data is the picture of a couple jogging on the front of the box of low-fat blueberry muffins. Structured data is the label on the back that tells you they replaced the fat with salt and sugar.

Tagging as implemented today is not that much different than the slogan on the front of the muffin box. They're keywords, with a little added salt and sugar. They are better in the one sense that you can search for ".NET programmer" and not have to worry about the hundred different ways those things might appear on a dead-tree resume. I like the way Jobby does search and refinement of results in terms of feel. Feel, as Steve Jobs has taught anyone who pays attention, is hugely important. But let's not get too distracted here. People long ago learned to "game" keywords to the point that they are remain useful only because there isn't anything much better at the moment.

The problem is in many ways precisely the one named by the anonymous vendor: spam. More precisely, it is the ability of the user to add unverified information to the system that defeats the purpose. The power of Wikipedia is not that anyone can write an article, but that anyone can edit it. For every person who wishes to inject junk, there is another who revels in flensing it out. This is the missing link in resumes, tagged or not.

Ultimately what we all want is honest information. The problem is that I don't see how we're going to get it. I've written before about how reputation systems play a critical role in the success of eBay. But eBay also has the benefit of running a dominant closed market where they can get away with forcing everyone to play the game their way. Recruiting currently enjoys nothing like this. Good people may set up profiles that expose them as they are, but mediocre or dishonest ones will probably not. No one with a brain will voluntarily air their dirty laundry. And various layers of government regulation (which are bound to get worse) will likely conspire against the more creative ideas that might force people to do so.

Perhaps pushing the good people up higher will be sufficient. But part of me thinks that would constitute a niche resource rather than a general solution.

Topics: Applicant Tracking System, Recruiting & Hiring

Crazy Ideas @ Nobscot

Posted by Colin Kingsbury

Jul 12, 2006 12:31:00 PM

B.N. Carvin of Nobscot, a provider of web-based exit interview systems (an idea I love, BTW) has posted my first contribution to the Recruiting.comBlogswap.

Reading that post again I think I may have oversalted the broth a tiny bit. Saying, "because when it comes to understanding the deployment of human capital, most companies are close to clueless," may overstate the case a little much. And there are many good reasons why the approach I suggest might not work. But the debate is a useful one.

If you sat in on our strategy meetings at HRMDirect, you'd often hear one of us say, "now this may be too crazy to consider, but..." and then suggest that the sky is green and the grass is blue. The ideas often are pretty nutty and too far out there to consider. But the exercise is useful because crazy ideas force you to consider the underlying assumptions in the problem at hand. In the end the assumptions often look valid and the men in white coats carry the idea away.

But every so often you find that the crazy idea exposes a blind spot. Sometimes, the sky really is green, and understanding what that means is quite useful.

Wishing Doesn't Make It So

Posted by Colin Kingsbury

Jul 11, 2006 1:17:00 PM

John Sumser is never one to mince words. Today he writes,

The next time a vendor who you about the Resume glut caused by Monster show them the door and offer to see them after they've looked at the market. That story about a resume glut was true at the bottom of the economic cycle. We're now at the top. No one is complaining about a resume glut anymore.

As the old saying goes, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts.

I decided to do a little data-mining based on a sample of jobs filled by customers using our applicant tracking system to see if this was true. I came up with a sample of about 750 reqs which were primarily filled by job board posting over the past twelve months. Staffing firms were excluded from the sample.

The chart to the right shows the results. (click to enlarge)

53% of reqs received 25 or fewer applications. 15% received 26-50. But nearly 20% received 100 or more, and another 15% received 51-100. The positions receiving 100 or more ran the gamut from hourly manufacturing techs to vice presidents, in locations all over the US. Nearly every client had at least a few positions that got positively flooded, many in a matter of days.

John is right to say that the world is shifting. But when he writes,

"All of the new technical tools we see have one underlying thing in common. They are all reflections of a day and age in which paper processes dominated the hiring world... After 25 years of desktop computing (we got ours in 1981), it is nothing short of astonishing that the mental model behind computing is paper.

he reveals that he suffers from the malady common to IT analysts which I call novelty derangement syndrome. This is the situation where one becomes so entranced by the sheer perfection of an idea that they fail to take sufficient account of the challenges to its success. (And, the punch line)

Will the way we recruit change enormously? Yes, no question. But if you are a recruiter making decisions on how to go about getting your job done it is important to focus on the world as it exists today and will continue to exist over the next 2-3 years. You are not a venture capitalist making bets on where the next billion-dollar company will pop up. You are a tactical operator with a dozen or more short-term objectives to accomplish. The more we as individuals enjoy new tools and toys, the more risk we run of losing our focus.

As a vendor, I would disagree with the one quoted in John's article who called Jobby "very bad." I think it's a neat idea and if you're recruiting AJAX/Ruby developers it may become a key resource in the next 12-18 months. But if you're recruiting manufacturing engineers or marketing coordinators it could still be 3-5 years before it's mainstream.

Unless you want to try pulling an Ericsson and getting rid of everyone over 35, you're still going to be sorting through resumes the old-fashioned way for years to come. Buggy whips may be pretty useless today. But in 1910, a bale of hay would probably have gotten you farther than five gallons of gasoline.

* Those of a certain philosophical bent might also characterize this as a form of immanentizing the eschaton.

The Goldberg Variations

Posted by Colin Kingsbury

Jun 12, 2006 11:00:00 PM

Harry the Marketing Headhunter is standing firm on his predictionthat Jobster will change its name to Recruiting.com sooner or later. He makes some great arguments but I'm voting with the Recruiting Animal on this one: highly unlikely.

Harry is on strong ground when he says it's all about the PageRank. On the Internet, every business is an island, and Google runs the ferries. The ability of search engines to steer monetizable traffic is nothing short of epochal in its significance.

The problem I see is that re-branding as Recruiting.com purely for the SEO payoff feels like a great checkers move--when Google's playing chess.

First, this assumes that "recruiting" is really the ideal keyword with which to capture leads. I'm not so sure. Over time, Google (and other search engines) are conditioning people to start by being very specific, and then broaden their queries only if they don't get enough results. So my guess is that the first thing someone is going to type into Google isn't "recruiting," but "AJAX programmer." Search advertising is 100% about feeding impulses. When someone searches for an "AJAX programmer" there is a lot of impulse to monetize.

Then again, Joel Cheesman figured out that Jobster will pay $3/click for "recruiting" so they clearly think it's worthwhile. Who am I to argue?

But the second point is that this seems to assume that Google's index weightings won't change much. After all, if Larry and Sergey one day roll out a version of PageRank that ignores domain names, then the domain name ceases to have any secret-sauce value beyond what Jobster, Jobby, or HRMDirect have. As for the likelihood of such a change, I'd consider it pretty much inevitable. When someone types "recruiting" into a search engine, they are looking for sites which will create a large amount of relevant value. Ultimately, how much does a domain name really tell you? Simply that the owner got lucky. That Jason Davis secured the name recruiting.com in 2002 created no value for people searching on the term "recruiting." But by 2006 the community site he cajoled into existence had huge piles of content and discussion of great value to anyone who wanted to learn anything about "recruiting."

So my bet is on the table that over time, domain names will play an shrinking role in determining search results. Over time, recruiting.com will lose its intrinsic value as the Googleplex figures out more precise measures of relevance. It will just be another name.

And a dull one, at that, for a company that has labored greatly to be anything but dull.

Platforms Part II: the FUDdie-Duddies

Posted by Colin Kingsbury

May 31, 2006 11:41:00 AM

Martin Snyder has posted a follow-up to the discussion referenced in myprevious post on the Windows-vs-Web platform debate.

The point I wanted to make in that post was that vendors love nothing more than to convince prospects to buy based on abstractions like "platform" rather than the reality of the product they offer today. To be fair to Martin, however, I don't think he ever disagreed:

All the smart observers instantly declare that the platform is not the key element of a decision and that functionality, fit, vendor relationship, etc. are all more important. I agree completely, but thatâ€™s not the premise of this discussion.

The premise is that all non-platform features are cancelled-out, leaving only the platform question. This is not a practical exercise for buying or selection purposes; only a technically oriented, but not technical, exploration of the platforms as they compare to each other.

So far I would score this fight for Martin on points. While Bob makes many valid points in favor of the desktop (which I agree is still alive and well despite what all of us web-guys say) he has over-salted the broth a little in the quest to paint web-based applications as universally inferior.

Having spent most of my career in the start-up side of the technology business, I have developed a well-honed sense of revulsion for FUD tactics. There is nothing more irritating than offering the customer a better product at a better price and losing the deal because company X "was better positioned to be our long-term partner." When you get this all the time it is tempting to try to sling some FUD right back but this is ultimately a zero-sum game.

ATS Platform Posturing

Posted by Colin Kingsbury

May 22, 2006 1:35:00 PM

I am getting a kick out of the scrap between Martin Snyder and Bob Nelson, the head dogs of PCRecruiter and CBizOne respectively. It's a perfect illustration of how legitimate technical discussions quickly devolve into pointless posturing that has little practical meaning for buyers.

On the surface they are debating the merits of thick versus thin clients, or, browser-based versus installed applications if you prefer. If you are a software developer or product manager, this is all you talk about these days. But as an ATS buyer, the talking points flying between these two justly-respected industry veterans are not worth the time it takes to read them.

Every point made by both gentlemen strikes me as honest and correct, but utterly irrelevant to a buyer. Every one of them needs to have the phrase "but it will depend on your situation" added at the end. All their points are generally true but ultimately dependent on local conditions.

Look at it this way: an airplane travels much faster than a car, but if you're traveling between Boston and Albany (a little under 200 miles), it may be faster door-to-door to take a car. Comparing "the web platform" to "the installed platform" as Snyder and Nelson are doing is like discussing whether flying or driving will be faster without defining the trip to be taken. Especially if the two parties debating are a limo driver and an airline pilot.

Part of the reason vendors love to talk about platforms is because it means a lot to us. Choosing how to architect your application is perhaps the single most consequential decision a software company will make. Here at HRMDirect we are enthusiastic about the Software-as-a-Service/Web platform because we believe it is the [u]best platform for us.[/u] Ultimately, the benefits get passed on to our customers in terms of better features and lower prices, but that's a different discussion.

For someone buying an applicant tracking system, the choice is not between broad platforms but specific products and vendors. Chances are that if one platform really is much better than the other for your situation, then you will know it pretty early in the process. For instance, large multinationals with highly-integrated ERP systems are going to self-host an application they can integrate into their existing stack, with that requirement driving the rest of the process for better or worse.

As a customer, the only thing that matters to you is the product that is actually staring you back in the face every day. If you are wondering which platform is better, then odds are the answer is "neither." While the self-hosted/thick-client app may run faster, the web-based one may be much more user-friendly. Your IT department may be great at supporting applications, or terrible. So take the car(s) for a test drive, and make your choice accordingly. The rest is just hot air and conjecture, so choose accordingly.

Social Computing and Reputation Systems

Posted by Colin Kingsbury

May 11, 2006 5:10:00 PM

In my last post I wrote that online dating services would show us where online recruiting was headed. I believe this to be the case because they are both expressions of the same basic problem: how do I find a person who (fill in the blank). While the requirements may change, the processes have significant similarities.

But in this case it is the differences that illuminate. Innovation is a delicate organism that fares poorly in highly-regulated environments. Buyers whose first instinct is to avoid geting sued and fired will choose the tried and mediocre over the new and promising with depressing regularity. Recruiting is among the more closely-watched activities companies engage in, while dating is a veritable Wild West frontier. The bottom line here is that in dating, consumers and vendors can and will try anything to get better results, while in HR, it can takes years for an idea to gain acceptance. That's why I think it makes a practical "crystal ball."

At its heart, "social computing" could be summed up as the idea that the audience adds value to the performance. At one end of the scale, the audience is the performance, as in the case of eBay. One of the most important parts of eBay, arguably its crown jewel, are its member feedback ratings. By measuring and reporting objectively on the honesty
of its members, eBay has successfully convinced me and millions of other people to mail large checks to people we've never met for things we've never seen. This is no small achievement in a world where con artists lurk around every virtual corner.

In online dating, the critical transaction is the first date, after which the "online" aspect ceases to be relevant. As transactions go, it is a signficant one, involving a non-trivial investment of time, money, and personal safety. In other words, much more important than a vintage cocktail shaker. And yet, if you look at Match.com, there is no analog to eBay's member ratings. At first, this seems like a stunning omission: good user feedback scores on members would be hugely valuable to members and by extension to Match, which would obtain a proprietary advantage over other dating sites the same way Amazon's customer ratings give them an advantage over Barnes & Noble.

But the devil in the details is "good user feedback." Upon closer inspection, there are a number of important differences between the eBays and Amazons and the Matches of the world, and they explain why "good feedback" would very likely not be the rule.

Exclusivity: eBay is a "promiscuous" market in the sense that just because you buy a vintage cocktail shaker today, doesn't mean you will be less likely to buy a set of glasses tomorrow. Everyone is always "on the market." But in dating, a successful transaction takes two people off the market.

Easily Defined Criteria for Success: On eBay, there are really only two things for buyer and seller to argue over. Did the buyer pay quickly, and did the item arrive as described? Dating is infinitely more complicated.

Equality of Outcomes: eBay transactions are roughly speaking either good for both parties, or bad for both. Dates are much less uniform. One person may be content if they never see the other again, while the other is hopelessly smitten. Not a situation conducive to dispassionate analysis.

Dating is Recruiting
All of these examples can substitute the words "jobseeker" for "buyer" and "recruiter" for "seller" and the story remains largely the same. This doesn't mean a reputation system for recruiting purposes is impossible, but it does mean that the models we see currently in places like eBay would likely not translate well to recruiting.

Social computing, sunlight, recruiting, and rejection

Posted by Colin Kingsbury

May 5, 2006 5:19:00 PM

The Canadian Headhunter has a good post referencing Charlene Li's blog at Forrester discussing whether Chevy's "Apprentice" SUV ad campaign backfired when anti-SUV activists used the Chevy site to post anti-SUV messages. Charlene Li says it didn't backfire because it allowed the company to engage its critics in their own forum.

Jobster CTO Phil Bogle adds that a dose of the same kind of sunlight would be good for the recruiting process as well:

Why can't we introduce openness and authenticity in the conversations between employers and prospective employees? The results may not be as glossy, but I'll take real and meaningful over glossy any day.

The problem here comes with the term meaningful . It is surprising how difficult it is to find out what your customers really think of you, whether you have five of them or five million. To the extent that "social computing" techniques help draw authentic and unfiltered customer opinion out, they will help businesses to do better. The problem is that many of the critics you may find yourelf engaging are not really honest brokers.

It's kind of like when James Bond asks Goldfinger, "Do you expect me to talk," and he replies, "No Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!"

Recruiting is going to encounter an especially large challenge here because like dating, it is a process of rejecting people. No matter how nicely you do it, some people are going to take it badly, and a few of them are going to make it their life's mission to cause you as much pain as you caused them. Unfortunately, it's precisely these kinds of critics that take the most time and energy to deal with.

Of course, someone who got rejected for a job at Morgan Stanley has always had the right to carry a sandwich board on the sidewalk in front of the building and hand out leaflets. But this took energy, and reached very few people. With social computing, the gadflies can reach a global audience from the comfort of their sofas.

And contra Ms. Li, I think bringing these sorts of critics into your own forum lends them a credibility they might otherwise lack. Today any crank with an axe to grind can lash out at TGI Fridays on his blog and have it come up page one of a Google search for "work TGI Fridays" . But, the casual web browser will also play a little game of "consider the source" and perhaps conclude, "this guy is a crank."**

To wit, MySpace and Blogger are like the sidewalk, and you can't legally shut up someone who is determined to make a scene there. But, should you invite them into the lobby and offer them a refreshing beverage? And don't forget, when you ask them to leave, all their friends may show up to join the protest. After all, it's certainly not your best interests they care most about.

If you really want to see where this is headed, I would keep an eye on the dating services. They are well ahead of the recruiting space in terms of sophistication in these areas, and the issues are very similar.

** Disclaimer: This post does not constitute an opinion for or against TGI Fridays. This was simply the first example grabbed out of the air. I suspect that any business of any kind will have loud detractors, some legitimate, others not. Which is really the point.

Resumes: When a Picture Isn't Worth 1000 Words

Posted by Colin Kingsbury

May 1, 2006 11:44:00 AM

I would like to ask all my blog-friends out there with an interest in the subject or resumes (hint: Blue Sky Resumes ) to please spread the word that resumes formatted as images are not a good thing.

It doesn't happen often, but we see a lot of resumes here, and once out of every thousand or so, we get a resume that looks perfect when you open it up in Word or Acrobat, but doesn't get parsed properly. The reason: the document contains a picture of a resume instead of text. Usually this happens when someone scans a paper resume and forgets to select the "OCR" option, but sometimes it's obvious the jobseeker did it on purpose.

Chances are anyone who is reading this blog knows that all kinds of employers use applicant tracking systems like Resume Direct to help organize their resume flow. Resume parsing and keyword searching are two of the main reasons companies use these tools, and these will only work when the resume is in a text-based format like Word, HTML, PDF, or ASCII. We actually support over 35 formats, so you can use just about anything, except an image of a resume!

Whenever I see people doing things like this, I suspect it's because some self-proclaimed expert told them "it's a good idea because it makes sure companies will see it formatted properly" or something similar. Trust me: proper formatting is nice, but coming up in a keyword search is much more important.

Other systems "prevent" this by forcing candidates to enter resumes as text only, or to fill out multi-part forms to get the data in the format the system wants. Resume Direct doesn't do that for the simple reason that we don't want to create barriers to submitting an application. Our email-based application process , which is unique in the applicant tracking industry, allows recruiters to post jobs anywhere and make applying as easy as possible. Systems which add unnecessary steps to the application process don't just prevent bad data--they also prevent good candidates with better things to do from applying in the first place.

Tod Hilton's Living in the Real World

A Good Conversation Indeed

Crazy Ideas @ Nobscot

Wishing Doesn't Make It So

The Goldberg Variations

Platforms Part II: the FUDdie-Duddies

ATS Platform Posturing

Social Computing and Reputation Systems

Social computing, sunlight, recruiting, and rejection

Resumes: When a Picture Isn't Worth 1000 Words

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