Talentism

Want to Reduce Turnover? Turn your Employees into Brand Talent!

It is increasingly difficult to separate the act of finding great talent from the act of keeping great talent. In many ways it is a math problem: there aren’t enough people out there to replace the people you are losing. Reducing voluntary turnover is turning out to not only be the most cost-effective recruiting program you have, but maybe the only option left to you.

As recruiting managers come to this “ah-ha!” moment, they inevitably turn to the option of employee loyalty programs. The idea is simple: if you give the right rewards and say the right things then employees will stay around. It’s just like selling detergent: make it cheaper and sexier and people will overlook that your clothes don’t get clean. Fortunately people value their work experience more than they value their cleaning products, so the average consumer marketing cons aren’t going to work.

Loyalty programs will have decreasing effectiveness because the days of blind commitment to a company are done. In the past a company was an embodiment of a principle: security. Employment was rewarded independent of the value someone contributed, so you could be loyal to a company because they would be loyal to you. No longer. Too many employers view talent as a cog in the economic wheel: less valuable than the money and machinery, more valuable than the lobby décor. Many employees see an employer as an abstraction consisting of institutional shareholders wagging the dog that is management. Whether these perceptions are warranted or not is besides the point: it is the reality of our world. The days of executives taking a hit from Wall Street because they want to keep their employees around is a rare event indeed.

Employee loyalty programs have been a small but key contribution to this tsunami of cynicism. Management credibility is paid in the coin of authenticity, and nothing feels more contrived than an “attaboy!” followed by increased work hours, lousy bosses and decreased wages. Piecemeal changes to the relationship with employees won’t turn this situation around. It really does take a radical new approach.

What Do We Want From Our Social Networks?

Social networking is reaching a natural inflection point where we should all start to examine exactly what we are getting out of it and what we really want.

We are starting to formalize and systematize what all good business people have known for the past 5,000 years: relationships are at the heart of how work gets done. When we look to formalize and systematize we are really trying to optimize. Optimization is a way to get more output for less input (“pay less, get more”). All things that become optimized are subjected to the same basic process: scoping, then defining, then naming, then atomizing (breaking into discreet parts), then analyzing and finally measurizing (I made the last one up, but it’s the point where we all become concerned about how to measure the discreet parts we just analyzed). The process has one objective: to turn the intangible into the tangible in such a way that we can improve it and communicate it.

Buildings that Stand

In 1979 Christopher Alexander published a book titled The Timeless Way of Building. Alexander opens the book by saying:

There is one timeless way of building… It is not possible to make great buildings, or beautiful places, places where you feel yourself, places where you feel alive, except by following this way.

For recruiters that “one way” is transparency and authenticity.

The Book is Fat

I recently finished reading Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat. I have taken to calling it The Book is Fat because Friedman breathlessly describes every conversation he has ever had with anybody on the Indian subcontinent. It seems that every cab driver in India is a sage who is one step away from building the next Infosys. I have been an erstwhile fan of Friedman’s for years, but it seems with each book he gets a bit more garrulous and self-absorbed. I am never sure whether his books are going to turn out to be insightful economic analysis or self-congratulatory travelogue.

What is an Employee?

An asset? No… assets are depreciated. They have a useful life and then are discarded. You know exactly how much value you will get out of an asset (at least in accounting terms). When was the last time you knew exactly what you were going to get out of a employee?

Capital? No… capital is exchanged. Capital is arbitraged. When was the last time you got a group of employees together and sold them to a competitor for a price? Or, better yet, when was the last time you saw the value of a knowledge worker listed on the balance sheet?

Investments? No, no, no… long story, but when you invest you make an explicit risk / reward calculation. When was the last time you heard a hiring manager say of a new hire “Well, they will probably really mess up the whole project, but if they get it right we are golden!” If employees were investments we would seek to reduce all possible risk for the return we get. Small problem: human beings tend not to do well when managed for risk. They like to be inspired for return. While it seems to be popular, I am not a fan of "employees are things" metaphors, and an investment is a "thing." 

Volunteers? Closer, but still no. In most organizations the expectations of volunteers is low. The expectations of employees is usually more than "try to show up when you can".

No… employees are investors. They provide you with something of value and you in turn give them a return. You want the good ones to give you more and the bad ones to give you less. As a manager you don’t want T. Boone Pickens investing, but you do want Warren Buffet.

What Exactly is "Talent" Anyway?

When I first started blogging I put up a post called “New Rules for Recruiting in the Creative Age.” That post is my manifesto about what I believe about recruiting and the concepts, technologies, systems and processes that it involves. Often, when I think I am going to far astray, I check back in what that post to make sure that I am still on the same page with myself (a sort of “strangelovian” concept).

Three of the rules from that post have a direct impact on our exploration of the meaning of talent. They were:

6.) Talent is defined by production, not opportunity ("Real artists ship").

12.) Talent is not a person. Talent is a capability.

13.) Talent is not an employment contract. Talent is the delivery of the capability.

Great Article by Dave Lefkow!

A big shout out to my brother from another mother Dave Lefkow (I really can't make hip-hop work, can I?) His article in ERE today was absolutely awesome. It's just one of many reasons I am so pleased to be writing a book with him.

Make sure you check out his article (and all his other articles while you are at it, and his blog).

Great job Dave!

Why TuSK?

A couple of people have inquired: "Why start TuSK (Talent u Should Know)?"

Over the last couple of months I have had an increasing number of conversations with people whom I respect and admire that go something like this:

For the last (X) years I have been heads-down at work. My whole focus has been doing a great job for my employer / client / customer. Then one day I looked up and realized that the great network that I had prior to the start of my job / project had gone away. And now I raise my head from work and look around and see and hear that a lot of work is getting done through informal and formal referral networks. I feel like I am on the outside looking in. What do I do?

TuSK is my response to those conversations. It is a way for me to give back to all the people who have given me value through the years.  I hope that TuSK develops meaningful networks  for people who may not otherwise know how to "jump in."

And if you are "in my network" and want to become an author so you can tell the world about the great people you know, please write me. Thanks everyone!

Clear or Certain?

On Monday we talked about the concept of "Right versus Rich." Today we will talk about "Certain" versus "Clear."

"Right" people need certainty. It is a psychological signature; you can see it in how they approach people, projects and their work in general. You want to find "certain" people if you are hiring for advanced technical research positions, scientists, financial analysts, compensation specialists or safety inspectors. You want people who display the "certain" signature for any job where getting it wrong costs lives or costs millions of dollars, and where the cost of getting right is always worth it.

Announcing TuSK!

I am not a recruiter. There, I said it. I do a lot of my work in a recruiting department, and spend a lot of time with recruiters and I have been a recruiter in the past. But right now I am doing technology, strategy and business stuff, not the whole recruiting thing.

But once you recruiting in your blood it is hard to forget. It's a lot like sales but with two smiling faces instead of one (since in recruiting you always have two customers: the candidate and the hiring manager). You can go on to start companies and do all sorts of things, but you never forget the high of helping a great person find a job, or connecting two great people so that they go start something great. I think it’s one of the coolest ways known to wo/man to make the world a better place.

It’s with that in mind that I have started a new blog: TuSK. TuSK stands for Talent u Should Know. As I explain on the site, TuSK is about introducing you to:

• People who I have worked with who I think are great, and
• People who I trust and respect, and
• People who the people I trust and respect know

In other words, it’s an informal network of at most one degree of separation. Sometimes you will see a short note from me about somebody I think you should know. Sometimes you will see a note from that person themselves (that note can cover any topic of their interest as long as they think it serves as a way to get to know them better). Other times you will see people I trust and respect writing about great people they know. But no matter what, if you are reading about someone on TuSK he or she is a person I am willing to champion and spend time on.

There aren’t many rules, but the few that exist won’t be broken:

• If I don’t know you, introducing yourself via email won’t qualify as “friendship.” To be a guest author or otherwise be in the TuSK spotlight I need to really get to know you. You figure out how (hint: email always works better than phone or voice mail).
• No fees, no time, no way. Don’t even think about writing me to put someone on if you will get paid for it sometime later. This is a way of building a value network, not of getting my friends rich. If I find out you are pushing people for monetary gain you will be deleted as an author.
• If you like the site, think about using the “Tip Jar” on the left hand column. It will help me cover the costs of the site.
• All posts are approved by me before they go out, so if I don’t like it, I won’t post it. No exceptions.
• I reserve the right to change, add, delete, modify, color and flaunt the rules however I see fit. No whining!

Otherwise let’s have at it and see if we can’t all introduce each other to the great people we know.

Right or Rich?

Here is an easy way to see if there is alignment between a hiring manager and an employee. Ask them both the same question: "Do you want to be right, or do you want to be rich?"

Said another way: "Which is more important to you: your ego or your value?"

We Need a Better Spec

John Sumser has a nice piece on Online Job Ads today. It has struck me as I have read various takes on this topic that the contrarian, Brand Talent approach would be to list more detail rather than apply more spin. We need a better spec, not a better sell.

No More "Passive"

I am not going to use the term “passive candidates” anymore. I have used it in the past as short-hand for describing a person who won’t ever be coming to your job site to apply for a job.

But the concept of a “passive candidate” appears to be a contradiction in terms. When I have been talking about passive candidates I have been speaking of people who are constantly updating and expanding their networks and finding ways to add value to that network. They work almost as hard as “active” seekers at getting to their next opportunity.

Because they are good at their jobs, and are in demand because of it, they expect you to come looking for them. They definitely won't be looking for you. Even more, they expect that you will have done your research and know what they do, why they are good and who else thinks so. This means they don’t expect to go through lots of interviews or have to prove themselves to potential employers. Their network can verify they are good and their network is trusted by the people who do the hiring.

So I would like to propose the concept of Brand Talent. (It may be that others such as Tom Peters have done this - let me know if you have heard of this before so I can link to their definition.) Brand Talent has the following characteristics: