Recruiting Innovation

If you Google the words “recruiting innovation” this morning you will probably find a dozen or more blog posts about the Recruiting Innovation Summit yesterday conducted by ERE.net and hosted by LinkedIn at their headquarters in Mountain View, CA. When I began blogging again, I promised that I would avoid becoming a “me too” blogger and only publish stuff that came out of my own head, but there is one condition which I failed to mention: When there is a “light bulb” moment that absolutely rocks me I am not responsible for the words that come out of the keyboard! It is impossible for me to give a total recap of the conference and also unnecessary because ERE.net will eventually post the video of the entire event on their website. I felt a need to highlight some of the most innovative points from my perspective and to encourage you to watch the presentations later if you missed it live. Also, just like when you take notes in class, I probably didn’t write down the things I thought I already knew, so this will be the high points from my perspective (your mileage may vary):

1. Curating Performance And Culture Through Extraordinary Hiring – Nilofer Merchant – I absolutely loved the “curator” of talent concept and there were several tweets during the conference about the use of that term. Nilofer defined culture as the environment that allows employees to co-create. There is no good or bad culture, but rather “does the group know how to work together to get the job done?” One key point that I think can never be made enough is that a culture of collaborative work must be created intentionally. It does not just happen. Great culture creates an exponential increase in talent. “It’s magic and you are magicians” was a segue into talking about the alchemy of people…”let it happen.” Culture is the invisible glue that allows work to happen, but it also changes when we change (to me that means adaptable culture). Success = Purpose x Talent (Culture).
2. From Lab Dreams to Real Solutions – Kane Cochran, Tomya Ryans – Tomya talked about how cancer treatment had become so very personalized at MSKCC that it was not a stretch to personalize the employment process. Their presentation highlighted Innovation for Digital Talent Acquisition and reported a successful partnership of MSKCC with Hodes for the integration of Facebook and LinkedIn into a company recruiting website. 99% of LinkedIn profiles contain information about work history and the number of LinkedIn users worldwide is growing at a tremendous rate. It is a remarkable marriage which pulls data from social profiles to personalize candidate experience. This goes far beyond the traditional post-and-pray mentality making it easier for individuals to present themselves as candidates and gives recruiters a better tool for understanding the applicant and opening lines of communication. Could this be the beginning of the end of the black-hole?
3. Recruiting College Students And Beyond Using Social Media – Larry Nash – The first point mentioned was that they treated colleges like a client. From that perspective, branding became a tool for change and the innovation. There were several innovative mentions of social media recruitment of college students using the usual suspects. One twist was the use of a Facebook page with a set of ground rules that allowed negative comments to remain. Of course, this took a bit of courage not usually found in such a traditionally conservative industry and I imagine there were some reservations from the legal eagles, but it provided an opportunity to respond quickly and soon college students knew that they would get fast answers to their questions. This alone gave this brand authenticity by showing that it wasn’t just another marketing creation. The innovation that absolutely knocked my socks off was their use of E&Y branded music channels on Pandora. Larry quipped that “this is because of all the accounting music out there” which drew laughter from the crowd. This is pure genius! It was not only an internal team builder which let the employees pick the music, but also it related more to the audience they were trying to reach.
4. Shiny & Useful: Recruiting Technologies You Should Know About – Amy Wilson – I like shiny things, especially when they are useful. This was more than just a laundry-list presentation of new and exciting tools, but I find it difficult to summarize everything in one paragraph. Of all the sessions of the day, if you only have time to view one presentation, make this video the one you watch. Learn about opt-in tools like find.ly and Avature, a candidate relationship management tool with people focus. These tools allow segmenting talent pool and using sourcing and screening techniques which are not done very well by traditional ATS. Amy also turned to the dark side…what she called the creepy side. Have you seen The Social CV? This pulls all publically available information on an individual from social media and other online sources and gives the recruiter information about potential candidates. On the plus side it makes the job seeker visible to those who would hire them and is a valuable sourcing tool, but several reservations were discussed about the ethics of such searches. While it is not revealing anything that a person has not already willingly posted online, there was a split decision on whether it was worth it or not.  At the very minimum it serves as a warning to careless online posters: Everything it public. I do wonder if this could be used internationally because of legal restraints under Safe Harbor laws in the EU.
5. Location-Based Mobile Recruiting – Craig Fisher – This was a presentation by one of the most recognizable people in social media. At the outset of his presentation, he told everybody in the room and in the streaming video audience to connect with him on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Even though there are recruiters who still have reservations about connecting with just anyone, he operates on the philosophy that as recruiters, that is what we do…connect with people. One of the most tweeted topics was his discussion of the competitive use of Foursquare as a recruiting tool as a best example of location-based mobile recruiting. Most developers are moving toward the creation of more location-based apps and it will become one of the most effective ways to find candidates in the future. Here is my “eureka” moment: I have go to expand my use of Foursquare to find low hanging fruit.
6. Behind The Wall with Social Recruiting – Susan Strayer, David Kippen – This session began with a demonstration on how the professional relationship between Susan and David began while she was a graduate student and he was an expert online who was knowledgeable in an area of interest to her. This was a great introduction to the concept of moving social media contacts into real life. They illustrated the concept of getting behind the wall by moving from “lurk” to “like” to “talk” to make a connection. No one really makes close friends by Twitter alone. That requires real contact of some kind. There are tons of things that can be done with technology, but the medium cannot be confused with the message. Social recruiting doesn’t mean that a recruiter can’t take it offline, but there is still not a consensus as to whether or not it has to go offline to be social. There was an interesting group exercise identifying participants into groups on their feelings about this, but I will let you see the outcome in the video rather than spoil the ending. Let me just say that I am a “Green Dot” person with occasional red-dotness moments.

I feel that I owe an apology to these presenters for skimming over their sessions and paraphrasing their words. I don’t think that I would even attempt to say that I have exposed the tip of the iceberg since this was an all day conference and was intensely thought provoking. Hopefully my summary will pique your interest in looking into these topics further. If you are a recruiter and do not regularly read the posts on ERE.net you absolutely must do so, if for no other reason than to find out when these videos go live. It will be very much worth your time.