Talentism

Economics to Identity

Your grandfather probably worked to live. Your mother and father most likely tried to make a living. Your children will be working to define a life.

The inexorable trend of personal economics is from work as a fiscal necessity to work as expression of self, from safety to actualization. Work has always served as a basis for psychological affiliation (i.e. "I am a business person"), but now the expression of the work and the community of people you create with is as much a part of that identity as the role you play. I may be a business person, but I am more likely to describe myself as a over-forty family guy who works in the video games industry.

This means that I will probably search for my next job based on a specification that constrains my search based on those attributes with which I most commonly identify myself. Of course I will still care about company, geography and compensation. But I understand that I will spend more time at work than with my family or friends. And since work will become increasingly important to our identity you will want to make sure that you are spending that time with a group of people with whom you share similar values and principles, in a company that supports the growth and extension of that identity.

That is why I have always been a big fan of SimplyHired’s specialty searches. TechCrunch announced last week that SimplyHired is expanding their growing list of specialty searches to include "age-friendly search" (check it out here).  As with their previous specialty searches SimplyHired turned to a reputable partner to help define the nature of the identity. This continues to be a great business model: technical expertise and reach from SimplyHired, and content and expertise from the specialty partner. Both partners win, and the job seeker who is looking to "make a life" has a new tool in their search for the right fit between their need for connection and the employer's need to recruit more individuals attracted to their specific culture.

John Sumser has an great post today about the new specialty service. As John says "Nice move for both. It's the kind of win-win deal that should be a model for others." I agree, just as I agreed when SimplyHired introduced Dog Friendly search, Eco Friendly Search, Mom Friendly Search and GLBT Friendly Search. It has made great sense each and every time SimplyHired has added a new partner and extended the reach, relevance and power of their search engine.

For individuals who already view work as an exercise in community building, empowerment and actualization, the ability to see what employment opportunities exist across multiple companies that actively support your community and lifestyle choices puts the job seeker further in control of their economic destiny and affiliation. I think it is a good thing for Job Seekers and something that we will see more of in the future.

(Full Disclosure: I am a SimplyHired adviser, shareholder and writer for their blog. I am a completely interested party in their success.)

Maybe I Don't Like Being Jacked After All

After skewering Mr. Sumser last week for going to the dark side, I got a taste of my own medicine today. Apparently I am not as big a fan of midnight gardening comando raids as I originally thought.

Some recruiters inside our organization noticed that some of our jobs weren't being presented correctly on "Getthejob.com." I went to the site and saw that not only are they not presenting our jobs correctly (factually incorrect data) but that they take our material to create follow-on pages that look like hell so that they generate more space inventory.

Compare the experience:

Here is one of the original pages that is getting scraped.

Indeed.com gets it right (thanks Indeed!)

SimplyHired.com gets it right (thanks SimplyHired!)

Jobster.com gets it right (although they are still only scraping our job board listings, not the jobs.ea.com website itself, which is a bit of a bummer, but regardless, thanks Jobster!)

By contrast, Getthejob.com has the wrong data (the jobs they retrieve aren't for our Jamdat Mobile division), take our content (as John would point out, copyrighted content), format it like garbage (check it out here) so that they can sell more ads and then continue to "jack" our jobs by putting a frame on top of the results page when you click "View and apply to this job direct from this employers website" at the bottom of the follow-on display page.  But it gets even better. Click on a link inside the jobs.ea.com page that is so framed and you continue to get the "Getthejob" frameheader. I have heard of bad web etiquette before but this really takes the cake.

As I have said before, I like our job ads being jacked as I think it delivers a lot of value for us as a company (more people find our jobs). But I have also said that I assumed (due to my experiences with SimplyHired, Indeed and Jobster) that the "jacker" would be a good web citizen and work like the major search engines: you put in a query, get a result and are delivered to the originating material when you click on the results link. Unfortunately, companies like Getthejob are proving John's point.

So, Jobster, Indeed and SimplyHired - keep doing what you are doing and thanks for the free service. My lawn looks great. Getthejob - consider yourself shut-off. I leave my lawn to the professionals.

Announcing the Talent Unconference

We all get calls. Lots of calls. Same old products, same old services. And yet somehow every one of these products and services is “innovative” and “serves your unique needs in astounding and special ways.”

We all read articles. Lot of articles. Same old people, same old story. And yet somehow every one of them has “redefined recruiting” or “changed HR” and “is truly leading pioneering work in talent.”

And then we meet people. A lot of people. New and exciting people. They really are innovating. They really are redefining the field of talent. Not the popular kids. These are the people in the chess club instead of the football field. They aren’t using the same old product or service, and they aren’t the same old people. They are tired of the same old ideas being sold as “new and innovative.” They get a thrill out of challenging the status quo. They live to create exciting new ways to transform the field of talent. Many times they aren’t in recruiting or HR but have a real passion around talent because the understand that it really is a game changer. They translate talent innovation into amazing business results.

I think it is time for these new people to teach and learn. It is time for an unconference.

On January 25 Electronic Arts is going to open its doors to those who can teach and learn about innovations in talent. I am calling this “Talent Unconference” or Taluncon for short. The ground rules are simple but absolutely unbendable. If you would like to show up on January 25 you have to do three things:

• Clearly define what you want to learn about how to attract, locate, connect with, work with, leverage the value of, measure the value of and / or reward talent. It has to be something that you have tried to learn somewhere else and weren’t able to because it just isn’t talked about, and it has to be something that has some connection to “business” (P&L).
• Clearly define what you can teach about how to attract, locate, connect with, work with, leverage the value of, measure the value of and / or reward talent. It has to be something that you can’t find a lecture or speech about anywhere else. And it has to be “innovative.” How do you know if it is innovative? Go to the next step.
• Write me an email telling me about those two things (see last line of article for details).

Susan Burns will be teaching and learning about Talent-centric strategy (turning workforce planning on its head) and how that can be used to impact your business. Then there is Linda Glass, Dave Lefkow, Cindy Haugh, Sean Rehder, Kristi Cavanaugh and Nancy Gray-Starkebaum. They are going to be teaching and learning too. I am going to be teaching and learning about how radical shifts in user-centric talent technologies enable operational efficiencies and increased innovation. I am also going to get someone there to talk about the talent implications of connected digital entertainment: with people spending more time on video games than on any other form of media-based entertainment, maybe it’s time to start thinking about building your brand through video games.

There are other people who have said they will be there, but I’ll wait to announce more attendees until I get some initial emails (or maybe just a blank inbox – see below).

Notice the lack of titles and company affiliation in the list in the previous paragraph. When you attend this unconference you are attending as an individual, not as a company and not as a role. I suspect there will be some CEO’s there, and they won’t be any more important than a talent coordinator who has cracked the code on multi-variate marketing management. Everyone teaches and learns.

When: Thursday, January 25, 2007 from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Where: Electronic Arts, Inc. Redwood City, California.

Cost: We aren't charging for the event itself. The cost is your commitment of time and your willingness to teach and learn.

Requirements: Everyone teaches, everyone learns. Our email exchanges will cover the rest.

Format: That’s going to evolve depending on what kinds of emails I get. But it will be an unconference, and that means you won't be sitting in an audience listening to people speak. Everyone teaches, everyone learns. We do have some pretty wacky ideas however (like corporate karaoke – 10 minutes to sing your song - more to come). Again, more to come.

Maybe I won’t get any emails at all, and it will just be the people I named above sitting at EA for the day and exchanging incredible ideas. And maybe there is a real opportunity to start to build networks and exchange information about ways to truly innovate in the talent space. Either way, I will be there and it will be a great event.

Write me at jjhunter at ea and put Taluncon somewhere in the subject line.

John, You Partisan Slut!

Can it be? John Sumser, counter-culture guru of the recruiting world, Mill Valley iconoclast and purveyor of contrarian wisdom, has finally gone completely around the bend to the other side? Has he become a partisan, a person who advocates for a point of view independent of any sound logic to support his conclusions?

That's right folks, John has become a neo-recruiter, a partisan for those halcyon days when all you needed was a telephone, your wits and a pack of Camels. When men were men and content was sacred. And in order to get us back to those days John is prepared to do whatever it takes, including scaring the hell out of us.

For those of you who haven't read it, John has decided that vertical search engines picking up your job content is like people showing up to mow your lawn without your permission. John is a little rusty at the fear-mongering thing, having given it up during the Carter administration, but given some time he can flesh this whole analogy out to:

"Speed-freak illegal aliens show up and mow your lawn, taking your clippigs (FOR GOD’S SAKE, NOT THE CLIPPINGS!) and then graffiti your house while you sit cowering inside AND THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT!" Yes, unbeknownst to you, those perfectly crafted, Shakespearian job descriptions are being defiled by being ripped from your innocent website and posted in the company of other jobs! Heavens forefend! I believe I am about to swoon.

Allow me to “John Jack” here and reprint the most salacious parts of his article:

Job Jacking

Imagine this.

You wake up one morning and discover that your lawn has been cut. It's not particularly well done. It's long enough so that it will need to be cut again next week. The trimming has not been done.

There is a note stapled to your front door that says: If you do not want your lawn trimmed next week, please place a sign in your front yard saying so. If you want a better job done, please do one of the following:

• Contact an LEO (Lawn Equipment Optimization) Consultant,
• Buy outdoor advertising from us, or
• Place our billboards on your front yard (we'll pay you for this)

This is significantly more intrusive than the standard scam in which a donation is requested after the street number is painted on your curb. You'll notice that the process is opt-out rather than "opt-in". You'll also notice that the requirements for opting out are entirely the responsibility of a customer who never solicited the service in the first place. In this peculiar set of circumstances, none of the options really allow the lawn-owner to control his yard.

Now, imagine that twenty services were doing this to your front yard simultaneously.

That's what it's like if you have a set of job listings on your corporate website. It's what it's like if you run a legitimate job board, collecting fees for postings.

The gang member pulls up to your house, mows your lawn, takes your clippings and tells you that you can only stop him by placing a big sign in your front yard. Then the next one comes and so on. No respect for ownership, no respect for a particular approach to landscaping, no compensation for the value extracted, no consideration of the impact on the yard. It's just grab and run.

This incredible set of bad manners is brought to you by the likes of Jobster, Simply Hired, Indeed and a host of other examples. The model was established in days gone by FlipDog, CareerMosaic and CareerCast. "Spidered" job content has always been the ploy from job boards who were unable to muster a real sales force.

You have to go to his site to read the rest of the article, although I have to caution you that I just engaged in the “bad manners” of taking John’s writing and putting it on my site, all the while shoving money into his pockets against his will by driving up his traffic numbers. I guess my evil plan to trim John’s hedges for free is officially out of the question.

Now, first, I hope you will forgive me if I indulge in a confession. John has Jacked me before. A lot. And I liked it each and every time. John Jacks me when he takes the Talentism feed and puts it on one of his pages where he sells ads. I know I shouldn’t like it. After all, he is using me. Golly, I didn’t ask him to Jack me. He just did it all by himself. But like it I did, because it was better for me than it was for him. My “lawn” received a wider distribution which enabled it to better achieve its purpose. And after all is said and done, it’s about what you are trying to do with the content that matters.

But all this talk has got me thinking. You know, after the initial flush of excitement, maybe John jacking me isn’t so great after all. Especially when I see that he has ripped up my lawn, put it in front of his house, and then posted this sign on the front yard:

All the material on this website is the property of Interbiznet. Redistribution without permission is strictly prohibited.

Hey John, are you seeing other blogs on the side? I mean, isn’t this just so typically male! I put myself out there, ready to share my lawn with you and then you cast me aside and claim it as your own. You bastard! My mother was right about you.

Yes, content is property and as such it is protected. Just like the content of a flyer inviting people to a free concert is copyrighted. Just like speeches and campaign clippings and demo songs. As the owner of the content it certainly matters to you where your stuff is displayed. Punk bands don’t like their announcements displayed in stores that specialize in Barry Manalow. I get it. But Punk Bands do like their stuff displayed, because it means more people are likely to come see them. Sure, for their brand’s sake they would like the flyers to be found in methadone clinics and crack houses, but a full house is a full house. Better to play to a packed crowd than three committed fans.

So if you are trying to pack the hall (or drive traffic to your site) put the content up and know that it’s going to be disaplyed in places that you may not like or approve of, but that your ultimate purpose (a lot of traffic) is better served by wide distribution than no distribution. True, the mental picture of John standing in his front yard beating the crap out of anybody who walks by with a power mower was worth the price of admission. But if you want people coming to your show, you should avoid neo-recruiting partisanship and get yourself jacked. I highly recommend it.

Where Can I Buy Purple Cows?

If you have ever worked in the software industry, you know that this is a classic post. Great job Colin.

Is Transparency Worth it?

There are a lot of conversations happening around the concept of transparency. It is a great conversation, especially for people working inside large organizations, where the fear of being too "corporate" in a creative age is a justifiable concern, as this sobriquet often is equated with "not being creative" and "bureaucratic."

Transparency is easy to say and hard to do. It seems easy to calculate the risks of transparency (including loss of faith in the disclosing individual when they admit mistakes, loss of market value, loss of competitive advantage, and, most of all, loss of the illusion of control), and so few calculable rewards, that most organizations and individuals spend a lot of time and money to reduce transparency rather than increase it.

And yet one gets the sense that there is this growing hum of conversation, this background noise of dissatisfaction that won’t seem to die no matter how many forces are aligned against it. Perhaps it is part of the human condition, or maybe these fires are stocked by the immedicacy of the technologies that allow us to become transparent at the click of a button. Maybe it's a realization that the present economic and social model of information asymmetry isn't sustainable, and that the only way to attract the talent that will fuel increasing growth (organizationally and nationally) is to build relationships of trust built on authenticity. Perhaps there is just something in each one of us that cries out to be a part of something bigger AND better than our individual lives. Whatever the reason, the conversation won't die. Thank goodness for that.

Jonathan Schwartz is the CEO of Sun Microsystems. He has been a regular, albeit inconsistent, blogger since before he got the top spot. Jonathan had a post on August 12 that is a worth a read (in fact he has many good reads about transparency, which, given his position, are especially cogent). I'll reprint it here in it's entirety:

Doesn't This Drive Your Lawyers Nuts?

As you know, I'm a big believer in the transparency blogging drives for me and Sun. Driving information to the marketplace - all employees at Sun can speak their minds and clarify our strategies and perspectives, rather than having a pundit or competitor talk over us. And in reverse, driving information in to Sun - if there are problems to be found in our business, I'd just as soon they were in the open, rather than hidden away. We (and true, the rest of the world) can see and fix problems first, rather than letting those uninterested in fixing the problems take advantage of their existence (whether competitors or litigants). Sunlight's a great disinfectant.

As a CEO who blogs, the most frequent question I get is, "doesn't this drive your lawyers nuts?" And as I've said, no. Our legal team understands, guides, drives - and protects - our business. All without sneaking into phone booths to change costume. And with technology, regulation and our products all colliding in the marketplace (is it legal to scream "SOX!" in a theater filled with CEO's?), I sleep better at night knowing they're actively engaged.

If you want evidence that navigating today's business environment requires careful thinking, consider one particularly ironic issue: posting material information about Sun on my blog, including information about our business results, runs the risk of violating something called Regulation Full Disclosure, or Reg FD. The regulation's goal is to ensure broad, non-exclusionary distribution of material information to the investing public. And somehow, my blog isn't deemed to be such a non-exclusionary distribution vehicle (but a press release, or the Wall Street Journal is). Reg FD is something we're going to be discussing with Commissioner Cox at the SEC (whose views seem to parallel ours - the more transparency the better).

Are our lawyers in the way? The opposite, they're driving the change. Want proof?

Very quietly, this week, our General Counsel - the senior most lawyer in all of Sun - started a blog. It's here. He, too, is now the only member of his tribe, the only GC in all the Fortune 500 to have a blog.

Now the real question should be (especially if you know Mike), am I worried about what he's going to say?

(Joke, Mike, take a joke.)

Johnthan's main point is that the risk of not blogging is greater than the risk of blogging. Or, put another way, the risk of being transparent is less than the cost of being corporate. Of course that may be easier for him to say than others, since Sun has been on a downward path since 2001 and doesn’t seem to have many options at it’s disposal. Perhaps Johnathan just has less to lose than others?

My experience has been that most companies are hyper sensitive to transparency and the risks it brings. I am still searching for an example of being “too transparent” costing someone a company, where there are many examples of lack of transparency (or “being caught in a lie”) doing a lot of damage. I would venture that at the very least your level of transparency, including the demonstrated willingness to engage in the difficult conversations that are the hallmark of the principle, will be increasingly correlated to your ability to land and keep the talent you want.

Each company has to examine whether it needs to engage in the pain of transparency. It requires a careful look at the company’s strategies, the assets (including talent) needed to win with that strategy and the culture that will attract, keep and maximize the value of those assets. But one thing is for sure: most companies are investing in the wrong thing. Bad news is the new good news.