A Closer Look at the Candidate Experience drew a comment from Gerry Crispin (one of the masterminds at CareerXroads) that has made me give a little more thought to this topic.  His point:

Firms will increasingly be able to measure the link from an improved candidate experience to higher engagement as employee and (surprise) better company performance.  Then we’ll see some light escaping the black hole.

This is really important.  If companies recognize a significant business (i.e., dollar) value in treating candidates decently, they will be more likely to make an effort in this direction.  So establishing the link between a great applicant/candidate experience and great employee performance can help put this topic on the corporate radar.

It might also be helpful to super-simplify the steps required for process improvement .  There can be a lot of touchpoints and moving parts involved in the candidate experience—but there are really only three rules for making the experience great.

1. Communicate
2. Communicate
3. Communicate

Can’t get much simpler than that.  But as always, the challenge is in the details . . .

First, communicate on the corporate Careers site.  Really communicate.  Go beyond PR fluff and pretty pictures–include substantive information, and plenty of it.  Be transparent.  (This 2009 post on transparency is worth revisiting.)  And make social media communications meaningful, instead of just trolling for passive candidates.

Second, communicate with every single applicant.  Every  one.  Consistently and sincerely.  Impossible?  No!  Even if the communication is just an automated email, it can be nicely worded and can even be informative and helpful to the candidate.  Above all—try to close every candidate interaction with a communication:  an acknowledgement (“thanks for applying”), an update (“we’ll be scheduling interviews later this month”), a kindly rejection (“we really appreciate your application, but”), an interview invitation (“we look forward to meeting you”), a courtesy note (“thanks so much for your time to interview”), a sincere rejection (“although we really enjoyed meeting you”), or an offer (“we are so excited”).

And third . . . communicate during the interview itself, and during other personal interactions.  Whoever talks with the candidate should have something to say–they should be knowledgeable about the position and about the company and about the candidate.  (Reading the resume before meeting the candidate should be a minimum requirement.)

That may sound like a lot of “extra” work—but for many companies, it may be mainly a shift of priorities.  Once they start looking at the process from a human connection perspective, there may be a lot of obvious opportunities to tweak for improvement.

More ideas: Interesting background view from  Paul Dodd and Sarah Welstead at head2head.  A Gen Y take from blogger/strategist Sarah White.  A good example from Best Buy Canada Ltd.  And a thoughtful prediction from Claudia Faust at Improved Experience.

 Three Keys to Creating a Great Candidate Experience

Global powerhouse Ernst & Young was the first major employer to implement a full-scale Facebook recruiting strategy.  That was at the beginning of 2007—and by September of 2008 (according to a story posted on Attracting Talent) their FB Careers page had 18,000 “fans.”  A year later (according to our own Facebook basics story), that number had almost doubled.

And today?  48,029 People Like the EY Careers page.

That’s a lot of folks.  In fact, about one-third the total number of people already employed by EY.  Among the Facebook fans are former EY interns and employees, as well as people who want to know more about opportunities at Ernst & Young.

As explained in the EY FAQ:

Facebook allows us to share the EY experience with people who are interested in the firm, and creates a way for interns and employees to stay in touch with one another. The group provides a forum for people to share their questions, experiences, and comments regarding the Firm, and we can let you know when we’re coming to your campus for “Meet the Firms” nights, career fairs, on-campus interviews and other events.

Visitors to the EY Careers page will find an Updates tab (with news and useful information), as well as tabs dedicated to the specific interests of students and experienced professionals.  On the Wall tab, people post (usually) relevant questions about EY opportunities and (sometimes) get answers.

Ernst & Young is hands-down the poster child of corporate recruiting on Facebook.  So are there any other good examples out there?  Judge for yourself by visiting:

Microsoft Careers

Taco Bell Careers

Science Careers

Accenture Careers (US)

MTV Networks Careers

State Farm Careers

Hyatt Hotels and Resorts Careers

Up next in the Phenomenal Facebook series: Enabling Facebook recruiting.

 Phenomenal Facebook, Part 2: Corporate Recruiting

Royal Pingdom recently figured up the ratio of men to women on nineteen social network sites, and the results are both not surprising and very surprising.  Also very important for those companies wishing to reach potential job candidates through social media.  Not in absolute terms (as pointed out at the end of this post) but as a reminder of the subtleties involved in social media strategy.

The “not surprising” part is that women significantly outnumber men in the social networking arena.  Even though men were the earliest adopters of online activity and continue to lead in overall Internet use, women have taken more territory in the social networking landscape.  The obvious explanation is that women are (in general) more social than men, and more interested in interpersonal communication—which is true in the aggregate, though not necessarily in smaller slices.

The “very surprising” parts are (a) the extent of the disparity in 2009, and (b) the enclaves that men have apparently chosen to occupy.  Some details:

• Sixteen out of the nineteen sites included had a majority of women.  MySpace is one of the most heavily female sites, with 65%.
• The two major sites had almost identical ratios:  Twitter users are 59% female, Facebook 57% female.
• Men take over on the social news sites Digg, Reddit and Slashdot.  In fact they really take over, with 82% male users on Slashdot, and 66% on Reddit.
• The most nearly balanced sites are Delicious, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, and FriendFeed, all with just a slight female preponderance at 52%.

Several Pingdom commenters offer interpretations, pointing out that the male-favored sites are more about competition than sharing—that is, they focus on who’s got “the most” and “the best.”  Also that the often snarky tone of Slashdot lacks feminine appeal (which definitely rings true) and that women may be less interested than men in content labeled “news for nerds.”

There are a number of caution factors to be considered in looking at the Pingdom summary, which is based on data from Google Ad Planner.  First, it uses only U.S. data, which probably cannot be reliably extrapolated to other countries.  Second, the data is not weighted, so “users” can range from people who merely have accounts (but never interact) all the way up to power posters.  And third, many of these sites do not really figure into a recruiting strategy—or at least not obviously, not yet.

One Pingdom commenter points out that the best way to utilize these (and most) statistics about online activity is comparatively.  Excellent advice!  A lot of factors—such as fake profiles—may skew the numbers in absolute terms, but there is no doubt that the general indications are correct:  lotsa men at Slashdot, lotsa women at MySpace, and so on.

Crafting a social networking strategy involves significant challenges—and obtaining the statistical information needed to evaluate various channels is just one of them.  I found the Royal Pingdom info in a fantastic round-up from Jeremy Owyang, pulling together sources for a wide variety of statistical views.  I’ll follow up on a few more and post further highlights soon.

 Social Networking: What About the Men?

It seems like every day begins with some news report on jobs and employment.  It all runs together after a while, but the statistics fall into two categories:  Jobs lost/created, and People finding/not finding jobs.  There’s a big difference in the two perspectives.

Plus, each category has several different flavors.  Here’s a super-speedy example of the kind of real-life information that’s aggregated into statistical statements:

Acme is making fewer widgets, so it needs fewer widget-makers, so those jobs are lost—but only until or unless Acme needs more widgets.  Acme’s competitor A-Plus decides to make only automatic widgets from now on, so manual widget-maker jobs are gone forever there.  However Acme decides to make special Fourth of July widgets this year, so there are some temporary manual widget-making jobs for the employees laid off by A-Plus.  But there are many widget-maker wannabes in the unemployment line who will be happy to work for less than the experienced Acme personnel.  Meanwhile, A-Plus needs robotics-nerds, pronto, and there aren’t enough to go around, so headhunters are burning up their cell phones . . .

And if you are a laid-off English teacher or a downsized stock broker, the whole widget thing is fantastically irrelevant anyway.  Aggregate numbers are next to meaningless for real job-hunters–but they contribute to the serious psychological effects of being unemployed.  The worse the news sounds, the more hopeless things may seem if you’re one of the statistics.

In the run-up to Christmas 2009, it was easy to miss this important New York Times story on the effects of unemployment, but it’s message is summarized in the title:  Poll reveals depth and trauma of joblessness.

More than half of the poll respondents reported depression, anxiety, and insomnia along with their more practical problems such as the threat of foreclosure and the loss of health insurance.  So not only is the volume of applicants steeply increasing at many companies, more than a few of those job-seekers may be struggling not only to make ends meet but also to cope with the psychological repercussions of unemployment.

What does that mean in terms of recruiting and the corporate Careers site?  Big unemployment numbers are made up of real people who go to company sites because they really need jobs.  Which seems worth thinking about.  I can’t point to experts or examples of best practices in this area—unfortunately there don’t seem to be any.  But here are some possibilities I thought up:

• What if companies put an encouraging message on their site, noting that while there may not be a lot of jobs right now, there are some–and they really want you to apply?
• What if companies provided extra information on their sites about preparing for interviews, improving resumes, and making the most of your application?
• What if companies reviewed their rejection letters and made them more friendly and supportive?  (There’s a great set of suggestions at Careerbuilder.)
• In fact—what if more companies actually sent rejection letters?  Or even followed up on applications?  These days, a lot of people are putting a lot of hope into their applications, and most would appreciate being nicely told (sooner rather than later) that their application really was considered, even if they won’t be getting the job.
• And here’s my most radical idea:  What if companies took some energy away from the hunt for “passive candidates” and put it into looking for well-qualified applicants that really need a job?

I’d love to hear opinions and idea!

(Thanks to Iragerich for the cunning number swirl.)

 By the Numbers: The Psychology of Unemployment

Among the Earth-shaking events of April 2010 was Apple’s announcement that iProducts will never, ever have support for Flash.

So?

It may not be important to follow the back-and-forth technical arguments about Flash, but anyone who has anything to do with corporate communications online should acquire at least a high-level overview of this development.  And since employer branding in general, and the Careers site in particular, have a strong interest in social networking and multimedia, there are very good reasons to be in the picture on this topic.

Oh?

Skip the details, and the issue is mainly mobility.  For good or otherwise—folks today want to see/find/do everything on their phones (and other mobile devices) that they can see/find/do at their desks.  In fact they want to do more, since they will be operating in physical space, in real time, rather than just looking at a static monitor.  Plus:  They want it all to be seamlessly familiar, easily accessible, battery-friendly, and plenty quick.

Leveraging the mobility agenda is increasingly important for effective recruiting.  So companies need to be aware of shifts in technology and ahead of the adoption/implementation curve.  If IT is trying to talk to you about HTML5, listen.  If they are not talking about it, worry.

For a fairly friendly introduction to the issues at play, follow these steps:

1. Read Steve Jobs’s clearly written and well reasoned explanation of Apple’s position.
2. Read Mashable’s follow-up post, Apple Didn’t Kill Flash, HTML5 Did.
3. Read another point of view from Flash developer Richard Leggett
4. Zoom out and review the big picture with Wired’s analysis of the Top 7 Disruptions of 2009.

Finally, make sure tech evolution is getting serious consideration at your company. Will those high-value passive candidates be able to view CEO greetings, employee testimonials, and other cool Careers content on their iPads??

 Farewell to Flash? (And Why That Matters)