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Looking Ahead: 2010 (Inspiration)

After looking back at the posts of a year now gone by, it’s time for a look ahead.  And many thanks are due to Sharlyn Lauby at HR Bartender for the post that started this thread:  Let’s Celebrate the End of 2009! It’s short but thoughtful, so be sure to stop by and read it.

I followed a link from that post to Seth Godin’s free and fabulous e-book, What Matters Now.  Download it and get inspired.  There are snips from dozens of writers—and though you won’t like them all, you are bound to love some.

Overview:

Here are more than seventy big thinkers, each sharing an idea for you to think about as we head into the new year.  From bestselling author Elizabeth Gilbert to brilliant tech thinker Kevin Kelly, from publisher Tim O’Reilly to radio host Dave Ramsey, there are some important people riffing about important ideas here.  The ebook includes Tom Peters, Fred Wilson, Jackie Huba and Jason Fried, along with Gina Trapani, Bill Taylor and Alan Webber.

There’s a page for each author’s contribution—and the goal is to spread the book far and wide.  In addition to great ideas, it offers information about Room to Read, a non-profit program that builds schools and libraries for some of the world’s neediest children.

I tried to pick a personal favorite page, but couldn’t get down to just one.  (Tip:  Turn on thumbnails in the PDF reader so you can easily skip around.)  So here are two . . .

Re-Capitalism by Chris Meyer and Timeless by Mark Rovner.

What Matters Now is an example of what will matter more and more in coming days:  Pooling talent, thinking deeply, making a difference.  And spreading the word via social media.

As for personal looking ahead—there’s an app for that!  Revisit Jeremy Owyang’s column about the Intention Web, then check out 43 Things, where people post their resolutions and find others who share their goals.   43 Things is a tag-based social networking site driven by mutual hopes—and it offers an opportunity to see what’s moving people and engaging them.

On the day I’m writing, 10,714 people list “get a job” as their goal—and a fascinating feature of 43 Things is that people follow up with stories of how they achieved their goals, providing inspiration to others.  Almost all the users seem to be very young—these folks are not A-level talent or passive candidates.  But they might be some day, and 43 Things opens a window into the ideas and attitudes of people who could be visiting the Careers site of your company right now.

So that’s a wrap for inspiration.  Next up:  2010 (Predictions)

And the Onrec Goes to . . .

 

LV Home

Liverpool Victoria!!  (Better known as LV=.)

After spotting news of the Best Online Career Website 2009 Award handed out at the recent Onrec Expo 2009, I zipped right over to the LV= site, and had a really fun visit.  It’s quirky without being gimmicky—which is tough to pull off.

Onrec (“The Magazine for Online Recruitment Around the World”) didn’t offer any specifics about their award choice, but here’s my reaction to the LiverpoolVictoria site.

What I loved:

It’s loaded with real people.  They do seem to skew toward the extra-attractive, but not so much that it seems staged.  And they are identified with first names and titles, so there’s a feeling of authenticity. Nice touch:  The people are actually interacting with one another—sharing activities instead of just staring into the camera.

It’s tongue-in-cheek.  The banner at the top of the page looks like a bumper sticker, and there’s a continuing theme of lime-green hearts . . . and umbrellas . . .  and—well, you just have to see it.  In general, there’s not a lot of playfulness on corporate websites, because there’s always a risk that not everyone will “get it,” and it doesn’t wear well for long.  (Novelty has to be updated.)  But done right, whimsy can be very engaging.

It’s obvious, but not in a boring way.  That means you can easily find what you’re looking for (so it’s intuitive), yet you don’t feel the need to rush because wherever you are, there’s something of interest.

What I liked:

This was a total surprise.  I usually don’t like sound (music, speech, or otherwise) on a website.  But LV= is awash in sound–peppy music, people talking, etc.–and it seems to work.  I think that’s mainly because the sound supports the visuals and fits the personality of the company.  Plus:  You can easily turn it off, so it’s user-friendly.

The basic options are there, in the sense that you can you can easily locate and apply for vacancies, and you can also create a job alert.

What seemed to be missing:

I saw zero social media connection.  Although that’s not a deal-breaker, it does imply that the site is a bit behind the curve.  It’s interesting that Onrec (which is focused specifically on online recruiting) gave the top award to a site with no Facebook and no Twitter.  But on the up side:  If LV= hasn’t committed to a social media strategy, at least they are not trying to fake it.

I couldn’t find a link to the main corporate site.  That seems odd.

It doesn’t appear you can upload a CV proactively—just for a specific position. However, their description of the employment process (which is clear, helpful and easy to find) indicates that resumes will be compared against all open positions.

That’s the end about LV, but–

Did you notice that the bold words above represent all five vowels?  (Leaving out “sometimes W and Y.”)  They are borrowed from a nice presentation by Matt Adam, Chief Talent Strategist for NAS Recruitment Communications.  Not groundbreaking, but a good summary, plus lots of examples—and the “vowels” offer an easy way to remember some basics of best practice for the Careers website.

Repsol: An Engaging Website

Some companies understand the value of a well designed content rich corporate website. Repsol, a Madrid based energy company, understands this very well. Their homepage is an engaging array of content–

Seldom have I seen such an entertaining, informative and well designed corporate website. Some observations–

  • Quick access to more information about the company
  • Same for products and services
  • A 3D tour of a service station
  • More information for the visitor

Next take a look at the Who we are section and you will see an interactive section —

Abstract art, yes but when you move the mouse over the diagram you will see more specifics about the company–

Simply put this is innovative and a uniquely entertaining method of presenting company information. But there are more innovations on this site. For example, visit the Strategy section to see a lively and interesting display of the companies strategy out to 2012.

Next the Corporate Governance section–

 

Note the extensive menu on the left and the comprehensive display of Corporate Governance issues. Well designed, eye appeal and just about anything you need to see about Corporate Governance.

Bravo to Repsol for communicating with stakeholders in an engaging manner.

Note from Editor: Ed wrote this post some time ago, but it got missed in the publication queue. Here’s what the Repsol home page looks like today – you’ll see that it has been updated with content which reflects the current season (snow!) and is still bright, engaging and colourful:

Repsol home page

My Pick of the Posts: 2009


Transport Number Collage

As we reach the end of my first year in the “Careers Corner” at Corporate Eye, it’s a great opportunity to look back over all the topics that have been covered in the column.  We’ve analyzed best practices, explored fundamental issues and emerging trends, cataloged some hits and misses, asked serious questions—and had a little fun.  Not a bad way to spend twelve months!

Year-end lists always seem to be the “Ten Best.”  (Or “Ten Worst,” but I’m not going there.)  So that was my goal.  But it turns out to be quite a challenge.  Just ten?  So I’ve cheated a bit, and chosen all the series from 2009.  Which actually makes sense, since the topics that merited multiple posts were among the most important.

So here they are, in no particular order:

1.  Employer Brand

Three posts exploring the 2009 Fortune list of 100 Best Places to Work:  Communicating the Employer Brand, Shaping the Employer Brand, and Energizing the Employer Brand.   Plus a Fortune Follow-up.

2.  Diversity on the Corporate Website

Possibly the most ambitious series this year!  The four posts were:  Hot Topic or Obsolete Concept?; Four Strategies; The Challenge of Messaging; and Disability and Unvisibility.

3.  Some Really Good Advice

Part 1 and Part 2 offer a road-map to John Sullivan’s important series of articles, which add up to 127 suggested features or capabilities for the corporate Careers website of the future.

4.  Surfing the Boards

Exploring a report on job rankings, which provided Thought Provoking Hilarity.  The first post did the thought-provoking, so the second is called . . . And Now for the Funny.

5.  A Macy’s Mystery

Part 1 and Part 2 investigate the Forrester Report on corporate websites–and consider Macy’s shift from an award-winning charmer of a site to something rather more ordinary.

6.  Talent Acquisition 2009

Three posts on an important study:  Considering the Aberdeen Report, No Surprises, and On the Other Hand . . .

7.  Tick Tock:  Recruiting Hourly Workers

Part 1 and Part 2 take a look at what’s true, what’s new, and what works in this challenging segment of the recruitment world.

8.  Social Media Roundup

An informal series on the most talked-about aspect of recruiting this year:  Twitterama, Fair Play for Facebook, and Leveraging LinkedIn.

Okay, that’s eight.  Which leaves just two more.  But—why not make it a dozen?  And since no one’s stopping me, I’m going with the four I most enjoyed writing!

9. Funny Business (because it has Jack in it)

10. Exciting Sites (because it’s beautiful)

11. Get the Popcorn (because it’s always fun to think about movies)

12. Silver Linings (because it touched me)

Once I started, this review process got really interesting—so I’m going to follow up with a list of the posts I think were most significant.  In the meantime . . .  here’s looking forward to 2010!


(Many thanks to James Cridland for the marvelous numbers.  They come from different places in the London Transport System—visit the original Flickr page for this image and you can mouse over the numbers to see where each one came from!)

What’s New (and Who’s Who) in E-Recruitment Software

The 2009 Gartner Magic Quadrant offers two scoops of info on all the major E-Recruitment players, plus a look at the up-and-comers.  Peopleclick has celebrated their location in the Leader Quadrant with complimentary access to the MQ, so I’ve been enjoying a stroll through the E-Recruitment landscape.

The MQ is always fun (for us wonks, anyway) because it does three things:

  1. Sets up the significant factors for evaluating vendors in a specific subject area
  2. Provides a nice visual of how the different players place in relationship to one another and to core considerations
  3. Offers a snapshot of what’s special—and what’s problematic—about each vendor

Thing #3 often includes some mild gossip (“customer references say XX is not very YY”), so the report makes for fairly interesting reading if you have the time and curiosity.   If not—or in the meantime—here are some highlights:

Gartner defines e-recruitment software as systems that “help to automate the requisition-to-hire process,” and characterizes this market space as “made up of recruitment specialists, ERP/human resource management system (HRMS) vendors and talent management suite vendors.”

According to Gartner, most customers responding to their survey (about 200, widely varied in size and industry) had “the basics” in place, and it appears that such fundamentals as requisitioning, candidate self-service, job board posting and applicant tracking are fairly similar among various vendor offerings.  The report goes on to describe several differentiators among the products included in the Quadrant:

  • Onboarding. Though “most vendors offer some sort of solution,” Gartner says there are significant functional differences, and niche providers are growing fast in this area.
  • Social Software. Amazingly enough, 22% of respondents say they are using social-software functionality from their e-recruitment vendor–but 34% report no plans to use social software. Here again, niche players are strong.
  • Interview Management. A difficult functionality area, according to Gartner, with some offerings significantly better than others.
  • Assessments. An important area for hourly hiring, with some providers excelling significantly over others.
  • Workforce Planning. Worth quoting:  “Understanding what demand will emerge for new hires, especially for critical roles in the organization, so that recruiters can proactively build talent pools, is the essence of workforce planning. However, only 16% of organizations have implemented it, and more than 50% had no plans to do so.”

Those differentiators were identified by survey respondents.  Gartner adds a few emerging areas:

  • Flexibility of Data and Workflow. Apparently . . .  much difference in degrees of flexibility regarding data captured in a requisition and on a candidate/applicant record.  “Some vendors require consultancies to modify workflows, others are more flexible.”
  • User Experience. Hmmmm.  “Improving the hiring manager and candidate user experience is key to addressing many challenges.”  Gartner says social software is “starting” to have an effect on this area” (I’d say that’s a bit behind the curve!) and that many vendors have “renewed or redesigned their user experiences to take advantage of advances in user interface technologies.”
  • Multinational Support. My note:  This is a complicated and increasingly important area of functionality that hasn’t yet received sufficient attention.  Gartner says: “Although many vendors offer several languages and flexible tools, few vendors provide out-of-the-box localization for multiple countries.”
  • Reporting/Analytics. Metrics for time to hire and cost per hire are standard, but some products also offer more sophisticated sourcing data.  There’s a growing focus on the quality of hire as well.  Gartner notes that some vendors build their own solutions, others rely on BI vendors.

Looks like I’m hardly even halfway through the report, so this post is Part 1!

2010 Branding Challenge – Don’t Let Them Say ‘So What’

The first decade of the 21st century is coming to a close, so I thought it would be a good time to think about, I mean really think about, your brand message, image, promise and positioning as we begin 2010.  To do so, consider the brand kiss of death.

What’s the brand kiss of death?  Simple …

When a brand name is mentioned, the common consumer reaction is to think, “so what?”  And asking “so what?” about your brand, is the brand kiss of death.

In other words, you never want anyone to think, “so what” after they hear your brand name or any kind of messaging related to your brand.  Your goal for 2010 should be this: make sure that your brand image, message, promise and position is so clear that no one ever has to ask “so what?”

Let’s take a step back and consider why people ask “so what” after hearing about a brand, product, etc.  It’s actually very simple.  People want to know “What’s In It For Me?” (WIIFM) if they take out their hard-earned money and choose your brand, product, etc.

I talk about the WIIFM concept a lot in my book about copywriting, Kick-ass Copywriting in 10 Easy Steps.  In short, the concept tells us that no one cares about you.  They care about what your brand, product, service, etc. can do for them.  They want to know how it make their lives easier or help them.  If they don’t know what’s in it for them if they choose your brand or product, then they’ll ask “so what?” when they hear about it.

And that’s what you don’t want to happen.

So I challenge you in 2010 to create a strategic goal in 2010 to ensure no one asks “so what” about your brand before the year is out.  Do you think you can do it?