A few days ago, The New York Times had this great article essentially about how bad waitresses’ jobs are. The short point is that their jobs - in a word - suck. The long point is that in an industry where 50% of the employees think their customers are just OK (not great or even good) and 25% are “awful,” it’s easy to imagine things like low job satisfaction and high turnover. Paradoxically, the article reports that

“American waitresses take pride in doing work that they realize many people, including some they serve so diligently, put them down for doing at all.”

“What’s this got to do with recruiting?” you ask, angrily? Only everything. It’s an example of the attitudes many talented employees have about their jobs. Many have the notion that a workplace is to be tolerated, and they still have great pride in their job and their abilities. To HR professionals, those employees are among the most wanted candidates: they’ve got talent, ability and dedication, but they’re probably interested in a way out - it you can give it to them.

To get them interested, you’ve got to be able to offer them “the whole package,” which is something we’ve written about repeatedly. Here, for example. Think about these figures: Google got 1.1 million resumes last year alone, according to Chris Russell (among others). Guess why. The salaries they offer are essentially in line with similar salaries, but the perks of working for Google are legendary. Those perks are often enough to make a candidate say, “Hmm, maybe I don’t have to tolerate this job. Maybe I should call that recruiter back.”

That’s why people like Toby Lucich recommends candidates “find that organization that operates like an Alma Pater [nutures growth and development, essentially] - this could be invaluable in your future career cycles.” Similarly, a study by the Chartered Management Institute argues that employees are less and less interested in playing office politics, in “playing dirty” to get ahead. You can show them there’s a way out of the soap opera of their current situation. Make sure you’ve got something better lined up for them, and you’re going to be able to attract the best and brightest every time.

Share This

We’ve talked before not only about what a Quiet Working Professional is but, even more importantly, why they’re so desirable. It’s an increasingly important topic as the war on talent continues to lumber ahead, so we thought we’d revisit some of our best QWP posts today.

Say goodbye to the passive candidate. Say hello to the Quiet Working Professional.

In this information age, recruiting a Quiet Working Professional differs from going after a passive candidate because of the “arrogance of supply.” In their book Talent Force: A New Manifesto for the Human Side of Business, Rusty Rueff and itzbig’s Hank Stringer argue that this arrogance of supply is a “disregard for the importance of great talent that some companies have grown accustomed to through decades of labor abundance.” The Quiet Working Professional is empowered by the Internet, and recruiting them means you have to “drive the process and actively go after the best people, the majority of whom most likely work for your competitors” (in the words of Krista Bradford). As Howard Adamsky pointed out some time back, they don’t need your job, your company, your opportunity, or you.

What puts the “Quiet” in Quiet Working Professionals

The difference is in a QWP’s latent desire for “something more” out of a job. A passive candidate is satisfied with their job and unwilling to participate in the very real stress of a placement process. However, a QWP, while not actively looking for another job, longs to be challenged in ways that their current employer doesn’t offer. A post on Sytematic HR claims that this underlying sense that a job is just OK or mediocre is why the best HR departments develop multiple career ladders. The post explains that many professionals who like their jobs aren’t necessarily interested in traditional advancement within their organization. They aren’t “on the market,” but they’re quiet (internally and externally) about their advancement needs.

Recruit Quiet Working Professionals by giving them a better work culture

A truly “Quiet” QWP may not have even considered how their work-culture could be improved, but opening that door for them can make them more receptive to the great opportunity you have lined up for them. Of course, as Barb points out, if their answers are simply money or advancement, you better be able to offer them those simple improvements too. However, it’s more likely that they’re going to want to be accurately matched with an opportunity that meets the broader spectrum of their work-culture needs. That means that you better have those kinds of opportunities lined up if you want to attract the QWPs in your network.

Share This

To put it frankly, the days of lifetime employment may be behind us. That means that absent a really incredible set of incentives - meaning the whole dream-job package: compensation, work culture, etc. - it’s likely that top talent will change jobs repeatedly during their career. Just a few years back, job-changing might not have been quite so common, but nowadays, it’s the rule of thumb.

However, that fact isn’t necessarily evidence that jobs are getting worse, nor does it prove that the upcoming generations of candidates are overly demanding or whiny. In fact, what it shows is that top employers are adapting their human resources models to fit the human needs of their top talent, and that puts talent in a great position. At the same time, it’s why Quiet Working Professionals are so desirable: they’ve got OK jobs now, and they’re talented and loyal but they can be enticed if given the right conditions. And that’s not a bad thing.

Of course, if you’re a QWP, that doesn’t mean you should haphazardly look for a way out of your job. We’ve recommended against it, and Penelope Trunk posted recently about it too. She addresses one of the big reasons for a job-change: The Bad Boss. However, she recommends that employees evaluate their own interpersonal skills before denouncing a boss who - granted - may leave a bit to be desired in terms of “managing skills.” She tells a personal story about a job in which

“I could have spent my time complaining. There was a lot to complain about. Instead I always approached [my boss] with empathy and knew when to put my two cents in and when to shut up. Aside from cutting a deal, he didn’t have a lot of management skills, and this gap left more room for me to shine.”

She learned not merely how to grin and bear it but how to excel by taking advantage of the “gaps” bad management created.

Of course she doesn’t work there any more, and that’s important. Maybe it was because she just couldn’t put up with it any more, or maybe it was because she pulled the trigger on her Plan B. Regardless, one way or another, she moved from being a QWP to an active candidate. Sometimes, that’s a talented employee’s best option.

In a post on his blog, Bryan Johanson says that that transformation is becoming more and more common as businesses and recruiters figure out ways to graciously attract top talent.

“If your current recruiting process doesn’t take these things into account, you’re likely to be losing some real top talent. Sleeping Giants [QWPs] won’t remain passive for long. Once awakened, you have to quickly change your process to accommodate their needs.”

Employees know these truths in growing numbers. There’s less and less remorse about a job change. It’s not seen as being disloyal or “jumping ship.” As more employers become savvy about what it is that top talent wants out of a job, QWPs are becoming more willing to activate Plan B or otherwise shift into active candidate mode.

Share This

Today’s title is a little tongue-in-cheek, but only a little. The truth is that, for talented candidates, finding a better job - or even the best job, a dream job - is often simply a matter of starting off correctly. Step one: forget a lot of what you think you know about job discovery. Step two: make sure you know what you actually want. See? Two easy steps.

OK, maybe that’s a little over-simplistic, but a lot of the classic “best-practices” for finding a great job just aren’t especially productive any more. Take networking, for instance. Sure, you can do great networking at conferences, trade shows, mixers, or even at your favorite pub. However, a growing number of recruiters and employers out there are adopting a Web 2.0 approach to networking. A post at Web Worker Daily lists “multi-channel communication” as one of the best ways to network today. That means participating in blogs, learning what Twitter is all about, and finding a comprehensive online hiring network.

Once you’ve established those contacts, stay on their case. Well, give them room to breathe, but only just enough. An online network has the potential to grow quickly and without bounds. But, just like the hiring world sources candidates, candidates should carefully weed out contacts that might not be ideal and focus in on ones that seem to have greater potential. On her KaleidoBlog, Susan Strayer lists two reasons for screening in this way:

1. The fewer contacts you focus on, the more likely you can spend more time getting to know them.
2. The fewer companies you focus on, the more you can learn about them, get to know multiple people inside the company.

She then recommends “appropriate stalking” as a means to focus on and maintain the contacts and promote yourself.

Perhaps even more important than reconfiguring your rules is figuring out exactly what you want. Shweta Khare recommends determining what your career goals are and comparing them to your personal goals, but you have to figure out answers for both. And remember that the answers don’t necessarily have to line up. Your personal goals may be very different than your career goals, but you should try to determine what they are. Khare says candidates should think about how much (or little) their present job engages or even inspires them. Is it making the most of your skills? Could you be more productive in a different environment? How so?

If your current situation is turning you into a Quiet Working Professional, maybe it’s time to more actively seek out some new opportunity. That’s when those new networking skills from the beginning of this post are going to suddenly become so important.

Share This

As we wrote about yesterday, there are several ways we wanted to improve the function of job-boards. Take the fabled Black Hole effect for instance: where a candidate submits all the right information but never gets any feedback. There’s a lot of talent out there falling into that black hole. Conversely, some job boards are so big that they overwhelm candidates with contacts – some worthwhile, some bogus. About this flood of information through technology, Howard Adamsky, President of HR Innovators says “the downside to this will be that a candidate can only get so many e-mails and phone calls before they become totally non-responsive” (from his post on ERE). Without major technological shifts, there’s just no way to guarantee accuracy and validity in the opportunities posted on traditional job boards.

That’s where itzbig’s network comes in. We’ve done the research and seen the missed connections between candidates and employment opportunities. We’ve designed it so that recruiters and employers share their needs, both current and ideal. The “current” needs get quickly and accurately matched with candidates, while the “ideal” needs put you in a position to source ahead of demand. In other words, when the end-all, be-all superstar for your ideal needs comes along, you get connected just to see if it is, in fact, too good to pass up.

And the talented candidates out there get the same quality exposure. They share what they’re looking for, and give us information about skills, experience and education, while we protect their anonymity. It will eliminate tons of compliance exposures, as candidates get accurately matched with needs, and begin a one-on-one relationship with employers who need someone with exactly their talent. There are definitely good and bad aspects to traditional job boards. We think we can make them more effective for discerning recruiters. Whether you’re looking for a candidate for a great opportunity or a talented worker ready to land the dream job, we think you owe it to yourself to come check us out.

Share This

[Daily post from itzbig] Talented Boomers are becoming inspired instead of retired

Whether you know it or not, a growing number of Boomers are realizing that it’s never too late for a change, and to recruiters, they may just be the biggest assets out there.

workforce.com: Would You Have Hired Cho Seung-Hui?

“Would You Have Hired Cho Seung-Hui? Don’t say no too quickly. The same questions required to weed out mentally disturbed gun purchasers cannot be asked of a person applying for a job operating a rivet gun or driving schoolchildren on a bus without violating the Americans With Disabilities Act.”

The Sourcing Corner: Today’s jobs with yesterday’s tools!!!

“A good sourcing strategy is built-in on the premise that we have the mechanisms, skills and means to find the candidates we need. Our sourcing strategy needs to have a process for eliminating bureaucratic procedures and updating and streamlining our search tools.”

The Cenek Report : A Primer on Avoiding the Botched Termination

“Like a cantankerous dog, terminated employees will sometimes strike back too, especially if they’ve been shoddily treated on the way out. In the case of ex-employees however, they are not striking back with fangs, but rather with a two-legged guard dog that’s morphed into a lawsuit.”

George’s Employment Blawg:: What Millenials Want Out of Work: A Baby Boomer Rejoinder

“How different are the Boomers and the Millenials on the points mentioned by Levit? It’s worth reflecting a moment on how Boomers were characterized as we were coming into our adult earning years, from the late 60s through the 70s and early 80s.”

Share This

Stop for a second and think about the Baby-Boom generation. They currently occupy positions in many organizations and have a work-production characterized by talent, efficiency and experience. They’ve not wet-behind the ears anymore, and they perform their duties with diligence and confidence. When they’re not looking for a job, we often call them Quiet Working Professionals. However, what about the ones who are looking for a job? Whether you know it or not, a growing number of Boomers are realizing that it’s never too late for a change, and to recruiters, they may just be the biggest assets out there.

Think it’s just the younger generation who keeps their eyes on opportunities for job changes? Well, think again. Boomers are realizing that the War for Talent puts them in a good bargaining position for changing jobs, and that demographic could potentially include all of the Boomers. In the most recent edition of The Recruiter’s Lounge, Jim Stroud’s guest was Bob Skladany, Vice President of Research and Certification for Retirementjobs.com. Skladany is a 40+ year veteran in HR management and consulting, and says that even late-career or retirement-age Boomers are still desirable talent. His firm’s research indicates that

“job opportunities for workers age 50 [are] going to have to become a far more orderly market despite the presence of age discrimination and perceptions held by workers 50 and older about the difficulty of finding work.”

While he thinks there will be little significant change in retirement law in the next 10 to 15 years, Skladany argues that since people are living longer and expenditures related to age - like Social Security and health-care - are increasing, we will see an increasing acceptance of older workers in the workplace in the near future. That echoes what we’ve said on this blog about the increasing worth of Boomers willing to pull the job-change trigger.

Similarly, Bob Gunn, co-founder of Accompli, a change leadership advisory firm, says his firm’s research recently found that “most executives are either tapped for the job or throw their hat in the ring, often mid-to-late in their career.” He’s quoted on My Global Career, and author Rusty Weston goes on to say that

“mid-50s executives will [often] ‘parachute’ into another company knowing that they aren’t going to climb any higher in the company but that the change role is open to them.”

The point here is that a job/career change can make Boomers a hot commodity in the near future of the recruiting world. However, it’s going to take a special kind of recruiting tool to attract them. We think our new network is the right tool, and we think you’re going to want to get in on the ground floor. By creating accurate matches between needs and skilled candidates, our network can put Boomers in a position to turn their Plan A job into a Plan Z job, a change of pace that will be the shining end to a successful career. Maybe they’ll want to move from a big, corporate environment into the excitement of a startup. Maybe they’ll want to move from private practice into the stability of a large business. Whatever the case, recruiters are going to want to be in a position to connect with these Late Boomers and help them find the opportunities they want.

Share This

Let’s say, hypothetically, that you are lucky enough to have some top-talent, Quiet Working Professionals in your network. One day, a position comes along that you think would be a perfect match for their skills. Now, do you know how to recruit them? If all you’re able to offer is the old slightly-higher-salary/ slightly-bigger-office, you may find yourself unable to recruit them. If, on the other hand, you dig deep and try to understand the QWP’s specific needs (which often have little to do with salary), you’re more likely to place them and come out looking like a star recruiter.

The thing about Quiet Working Professionals is that they have a relatively satisfying job already. And they’re quiet for a reason. They want their explorations to be done in a very private, confidential, gracious manner. Sure you might be able to offer them a job with better compensation, but they’re being paid well as it is. What else can you offer them to offset the hassle of changing jobs? To figure out the answer to that, you have to get in touch with their other needs. The case is often that an improved work culture is more attractive than money.

Rowan Manahan, managing director of Fortify Services, says that the

“majority of people don’t leave companies for greater opportunities or more money. They generally leave because they are not happy with their previous company’s culture or their previous bosses” (on Fortify Your Oasis).

You have to be able to demonstrate to a passive candidate or QWP that the opportunity you’re showing them features a significantly better environment and/or culture than the one to which they’re accustomed. Show them that the new opportunity features great communication and engagement and that their participation is going to be highly valued.

Barb Bruno says, on her blog, that simple questions can help you determine what it’ll take to offer QWPs an improved work culture. She recommends a role-playing sort of question like “What would you change about your current opportunity if you were your boss?”

A truly “Quiet” QWP may not have even considered how their work-culture could be improved, but opening that door for them can make them more receptive to the great opportunity you have lined up for them. Of course, as Barb points out, if their answers are simply money or advancement, you better be able to offer them those simple improvements too. However, it’s more likely that they’re going to want to be accurately matched with an opportunity that meets the broader spectrum of their work-culture needs. That means that you better have those kinds of opportunities lined up if you want to attract the QWPs in your network.

Share This

[Daily post from itzbig] Maturing employees could be your solution to the War for Talent

Employers are also concerned that the quality of incoming talent may not be on par with that of existing employees. If only there was some way to make better use of existing talent to mitigate some of the HR pain-points. Oh wait, there is: recruit, hire and retain Boomers while they’re still willing to work.

Financial Times: A bidding war makes for ‘crazy’ salaries across Asia

“The consensus is that recruiting and retaining skilled workers in Asia is harder and more expensive than ever. Headhunters warn that the inability to fill key positions with qualified people, mostly at senior level, is denting the regional expansion plans of many companies.”

AdlerConcepts.com: The Best People Are Looking - Finding and Hiring Them Is the Challenge

“First, it’s important to recognize that top performers, whether they’re active or passive, don’t look for new opportunities the same way that average candidates look. They’re more selective, and even if they are looking, they will only consider positions that offer true career opportunities.”

CareerJournal: Can a Business Be Run As a Corporate Democracy?

“Running a company democratically sounds like a recipe for anarchy, and it can prompt bureaucratic whiplash: Ternary, a company with annual revenues of around $2 million, adjusted salaries for employees up and down several times last year.”

Share This

It’s no secret that one of the biggest problems looming on the hiring-horizon is the war on talent. There are simply too few young workers (millenials/Gen’s X and Y) to fill the estimated vacancies created as the Baby Boomers retire, and as Frank Mulligan points out on his blog, the problem is a global one. Employers are also concerned that the quality of incoming talent may not be on par with that of existing employees. If only there was some way to make better use of existing talent to mitigate some of the HR pain-points. Oh wait, there is: recruit, hire and retain Boomers while they’re still willing to work.

“Sure,” you say, “but how long will we be able to employ Boomers?” Maybe for longer than you think. Sharon Adams, on Ontario’s Business Edge, says that “raising the employment rate for older workers is critical to soften the blow of a shrinking labour force.” Citing a 2006 Merrill Lynch New Retirement Study of 1000 companies, she says that “more companies are developing recruitment strategies for hiring young employees than are looking for ways to retain and attract older workers.” This gives companies who are willing and able to attract experienced employees a significant advantage.

Here at itzbig, that reminds us of the scene in Monty Python’s The Holy Grail where John Cleese tries to put an older man on the plague cart. The man keeps saying, “I’m not dead yet!” while Cleese insists that he will be shortly. Sometimes, it seems that the hiring world is insisting that Boomers are on their way out, while Boomers are saying, “I’m not ready to retire just yet!” Meanwhile, some members of the younger generation aren’t necessarily in a hurry to jump right onto a career path, according to Brett Farmiloe in his guest post on Employee Evolution. That means that recruiters and HR departments better develop strategies for placing Boomers if businesses are going to keep their doors open.

The quality of mature talent is one of the reasons Quiet Working Professionals are so desirable. They’ve already demonstrated their stability, loyalty and skill; recruiters just have to have the right tools in place to attract them. However, everybody should keep their eyes on Boomers who are implementing Plan B (or C or D). The fact that more and more mature workers are becoming active candidates (often instead of retiring) should create fertile ground for recruiters. Whether active, passive or Quiet Working Professionals, mature employees still have a lot to offer the business world, especially in the ongoing War for Talent.

Be sure to check future posts for a more thorough examination of Plan B.

Share This