Joyful Recruiting Makes Happy Customers

Since my experience as a customer long precedes my experience as a Human Resources / Recruiting / Organizational Effectiveness Subject-Matter Expert (Yes, I remember my mother taking me for all-Saturday shopping sprees in my stroller, complete with a detachable pink strap harness equipped with a leash to give my mother the illusion of preventing me from making a break for it), it's my great experiences as a customer with exceptional employees that tell me which businesses are probably great places to work:

• The nurse anesthesiologist who sang The Beatles They Say It's Your Birthday to me as my son Noah was born via emergency c-section while keeping me well-numbed;
• The dining hall staff who kept us well-fed and well-served at Ferry Beach, Maine camp -- it was more like spa food than camp food;
• The consistently great service I receive from the staff of the Rensselaer County Regional Chamber of Commerce, who continue to build their success by in turn authentically supporting the success of my business and those of my fellow Chamber members.

This week's Washington Post article on how Zappo's workplace culture directly translates into their best-practice customer experience is yet another key data point that happy / engaged employees absolutely make happy customers.

Conversely, it has been my consistent experience that employees with a bad attitude provide me with bad customer service (customer service is one of those key business areas where you can't fake it until you make it), indicating either a bad hiring decision or even worse, that the employee is a microcosm of a bad workplace culture, which acts as a powerful disincentive to bring my repeat business to their company. Social media on smartphones make these type of experiences painfully contemporaneous on the interwebs and embarrassingly public, such as the tweets I read from a colleague who real-time was experiencing poor customer service at a local grocery store, complete with the sour-puss employee complaining about their corporate management team.

Which is why a great Recruiter -- joyful, full of energy, authentically conveying how happy they are to work for their employer -- is a critical customer service and reputational representative for any company striving for best-practice customer service. As the Executive Recruiter for my company at the time, for example: my extreme satisfaction in my own job was often the decision-point attracting candidates to join my company. Candidates heard the joy in my voice during phone-screens, and wanted some of it for themselves. My company was a great product to present, and I derive a great deal of professional joy to this day vocationally matchmaking great candidates to great companies.

If your Recruiter exposes your candidates / new hires to a negative customer service experience, such as:

• Lack of skill / experience, e.g. slow response times or rudeness to candidates;
• Subjecting your candidates to bureaucratic hoops and transactions;
• Conducting phone-screens and interviews like a grand-jury investigation;
• And worst of all: when the recruiter conveys their own dissatisfaction with their job or the company;

You may be not only conveying a negative impression of your company and your workplace via the key channel of your Recruiter(s), but also hemorrhaging dollars in lost customers, candidates and turnover (e.g., the average cost of entry-level employee turnover is currently running about $6,000 a pop).

Or: if your joyful Recruiter takes leave of your company for happier workplaces because your company has become too negative, and therefore too difficult, to present authentically as a great place for great employees to consider, it may be time to take a step back and reassess your workplace / human capital strategy and branding as it dovetails with your company / customer service branding.

Which is why joyful recruiting is critical for happy customers.

How authentically joyful is your Recruiter about your company branding, your workplace culture and their job? And, in turn: how happy are your customers?

We May Leave Our Managers, But We Stay for Our Peer Mentors (Friends) at Work

I bonded with Dale as soon I met him after my fait accompli interview process with the rest of the Executive Team. Dale was the last interview on the schedule. All of the prior interviews frankly did not meet the threshold for an employment interview. Instead, they were meet-and-greet chats, e.g.: "So the CEO has hired you for the HR team; nice to meet you;" or "I understand the CEO is very impressed with your background;" or "Let me give you some advice about how to best work with the CEO."

My soon-to-be new company did not have a Head of HR at the time I was interviewed / hired, and hadn't had one for more than two years. I was recruited by the CEO as a Senior HR Manager to help bring their HR Department to the next level and to work with the CEO to recruit a new Head of HR. While I knew that I would do a great job for my new company and I was honored to be hired directly by the CEO, I wanted the same due diligence performed for my candidacy as I performed as a Recruiter for the candidates I hired. I wanted my strong skills, abilities and experience to be reviewed, validated and documented thoroughly so we could all start off in our work together on a high note.

As the Vice President of Loss Prevention, Dale did not disappoint. "So," Dale began, opening up his folder to my rèsumé, liberally highlighted and marked with his notes and questions, "What is union avoidance, and how would it benefit our company?" I exhaled with relief and smiled at him. "Thank you for interviewing me," I replied. "Please ask me all of your questions. If you have the time; I certainly do. I want you and the CEO to get all of the information you need to feel completely comfortable with me in my role." Dale smiled back. "Don't worry, that's my plan."

Being in a compliance role in any organization, especially a new organization, is not the Miss Popularity job, to put it mildly. So to have Dale as a colleague, peer mentor and eventual friend who was also in a key compliance role for the organization was a critical touchstone that absolutely contributed to my career and developmental success. Dale broadened my business understanding and acumen tremendously as we accomplished our work together: mergers, acquisitions, rolling out new programs like pre-employment drug testing, you name it. Small but significant things, such as upon arrival for a site visit, to visit the bathroom first. The tidiness - or chaos - of the bathroom more often than not indicated how well the site manager was doing their job. Dale was also intensely curious about my area of subject-matter expertise, and it was my privilege and pleasure to share my HR / Recruiting / Change Management experience, strength and hope in return. It was a peer mentoring relationship that benefited both of us equally: the type of work relationship flow that is pure business and career development gold. Dale was a significant factor in the length of my tenure with the company. It's the type of retention that CEOs with any smarts strive for.

Dale was subsequently promoted to an operations executive role; and currently, runs his own successful business. All expected and well-deserved. I had my first inkling of Dale's abilities beyond his compliance role about a month into my tenure at the company's national District Managers' conference. When Dale got up to speak on his topic, Loss Prevention, the entire group jumped to their feet spontaneously and gave Dale a standing ovation. Part of it was in recognition for the company's great shrink performance; but really, it was all for Dale: they saw him truly as their business partner and leader, not just the head compliance guy enforcing the rules.

Me, too.

How Email Address Typos Cost You Jobs and Business

At the beginning of my HR career back in the early '90s (which seems much more recent than 20 years ago), I had just received my WARN layoff notice from GE Aerospace (which no longer exists, sold off in pieces to its rivals General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin), giving me 60 days before my last day at GE Aerospace to find another job, inside or outside of GE.

There were two GE jobs available locally at my level and function, both at GE Plastics (which no longer exists either; sold off in pieces to SABIC and Momentive, respectively); one at the Selkirk location; and the other at the Waterford location. My site HR Manager and mentor, Tom, ensured that I was a candidate for both jobs.

I interviewed at Selkirk first. I liked the team and the work they were doing. When I returned to my office at GE Aerospace from the interview that day, I wanted to send each of them a thank-you note. Since I had introduced using PROFS email to distribute a now-crude electronic version of the weekly employee newsletter at my site (a precursor to Microsoft Outlook, which my dying business could not afford to purchase), I wanted to walk the talk of my innovation. So I sent each member of the interview team a thank-you note via PROFS, which was unheard of back then. Interview etiquette firmly dictated hand-written snail-mail thank-you notes.

The site Recruiter responded within the hour, informing me that they had hired an internal candidate and thanked me for interviewing for the position. I was annoyed. Clearly, they had already made their hiring decision before my interview, and I was interviewed to merely fulfill their EEO requirements. I shared my frustration with my immediate supervisor, Chuck. "Those who live by the sword, die by the sword," he grinned. "That's the risk you take with email communication." While I was eventually hired by the Waterford site - less then one week before the end of my WARN period - Chuck's observation always stuck with me, even to present day.

Now, I have performed my English-major rant in prior posts about typos in emails, which invariably cost job candidates and vendors both potential jobs and new customers. Recently, however, the typos have achieved a new level of failure through imprecision.

In the last month, I have received 3 emails with typos in the email address itself. So when I referred back to an email and clicked on the email signature to send a fresh email in response, the recipient never received my return email due to the typos in their email address and I received a mail delivery failure message from their email system. I helped the first one out because the guy fired great on all of the rest of his cylinders; he had transposed letters in his own name in his email address. I gave up on the other two email address typos: basically, it was too much work and too annoying to compensate for someone else's lack of attention to detail. If their prospecting emails caused this much work and aggravation: how would it be to work with them every day?

Wondering why you may not have heard back from that job application or that new customer prospect? Proof your email address, please. And everything else you send out in the email, while you're at it. It can only help support your success.

  

 

Good Boundaries Make Good Hires

And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

                                                 -An excerpt from Robert Frost's poem Mending Wall


Nothing is more frustrating when you need to hire 100 seasonal warehouse employees in 3 weeks than to have the post-offer, pre-employment drug test come back positive. Cost-per-hire time and money down the toilet (no pun intended), including but not limited to the wasted cost of the drug test, which could run about $35 - $50 a pop.

Now, you may not agree with the concept of drug-testing in the workplace at all: let's agree to disagree. In my experience in manufacturing and warehouse environments rife with automated conveyors, heavy forklift and cherry-picker lift-truck traffic, you want everyone to be clean, sober and constantly on the alert. A 5-story fall from a cherry-picker at the top of your typical warehouse to its cement floor is certain death. A human / forklift collision is at minimum a loss of physical capability and at maximum, life-changing paralysis or even death as well. You get what side of the fence I'm on.

Early in my warehouse hiring career, we had about 10 drug-test failures in one week. A $500 bite in one week out of my already thin Recruiting budget. The Operations, Loss Prevention (LP) and Human Resources teams got together and brainstormed. Here are some of the solutions we developed and implemented:

• We inserted messages into our employment application and ads that we were a Drug-Free employer;
• We posted signs with the same messaging in our interview areas;
• We developed a fact sheet for applicants to read during the offer process that not only spelled out we were a Drug-Free Employer, but also that we also required a post-offer, pre-employment drug test.

These hiring boundaries had an immediate impact, and we saw a drop in our pre-employment drug test failures. But we still had one or two each week, which continued to be a frustrating waste of time and money. I reached out to our testing vendor and asked what drug was the most common reason for failing our pre-employment drug test. It was marijuana, hands-down. We gathered the teams together again. "It's easy to grow and readily available, that's why it's an issue," one LP team member observed. "True," I responded. "It's not considered a 'hard' drug," a member of the HR team added. "So maybe applicants don't think we're testing for it." Great point. "Okay," I summarized. "Let's add that we test for marijuana to the fact sheet and see what happens."

I hit the jackpot later that week. Two well-dressed and professional young women attending college locally came in during the 2nd shift open-interviews; they were friends and I interviewed them together. As I prepared their offer letters and pre-employment drug testing paperwork, I gave them the revised fact sheet to read that spelled out marijuana as an illegal drug included in the drug test. "Ma'am?" one of them queried politely. I looked up. Disappointed, they handed back all of the new hire paperwork to me. "We can't work here," the young woman continued. Her friend nodded. "We smoke weed every day," she added. "We don't want to waste your time. Thank you for the opportunity." I nodded my understanding. "Thank you for letting me know," I said, genuinely grateful. "I wish you both the best of luck." I appreciated their candor, but wondered how many opportunities they had to pass up because of that personal choice.

Are you clearly and constructively communicating your workplace cultural and compliance boundaries as part of the hiring process? If not, consider the opportunity to lower your overhead costs -- your cost-per-hire / cost-of-turnover -- by proactively and positively sharing your workplace running rules with your lead candidates.

Good boundaries make good hires.   

Walk the Success Talk on LinkedIn

I attended a wonderful event this past week with some great connections, old and new. As is my habit with new connections, I used LinkedIn invitations this weekend to add them to my network for future reference / connecting. Next to my favorite past-time of in-person networking, it's networking in virtual 3D for me: business cards, no matter how clever and artful, are too one-dimensional.

As I ran down the list, 7 of the 35 people I interacted with that night did not have LinkedIn profiles. All 7 are heavily engaged in some way with customers, existing and potential, so I'm puzzled at their absence on LinkedIn. Among other utilities, a free LinkedIn account bottom-line is free marketing for your organization, plain and simple. Even if you're modest and don't want to draw the LinkedIn attention to yourself, my LinkedIn profile until this year served as both an adjunct to my organization's website as well as my own personal website. In several roles I've had throughout my career as Chief Recruiting Officer (and consequently, one of the organization's key sales leaders), the organization's brand is also linked positively to my personal brand. It's a win-win all around.

Now, as a new beta user of LinkedIn over 7 years ago (when, like Google+, it was invitation-only), did I cringe a bit as LinkedIn sucked up all of my Outlook contacts? Yes. Has it ever created a privacy issue? No, especially since you can lock down part or all of your LinkedIn profile if you choose to do so. Not to make the LinkedIn luddites even more paranoid; but if you don't lock down your LinkedIn profile privacy, news organizations have gotten into the habit of hyperlinking the name of people they mention and/or quote in articles to their LinkedIn profiles. So if you plan on or have engaged in felonious activity, let the LinkedIn buyer beware.

Being a free and then a business member of LinkedIn has been all upside. I've sourced great candidates, made strong connections and even attracted new business prospects for both me and my network thanks to LinkedIn. The ongoing evolution of LinkedIn functionality over the years has only enhanced the platform as a key business tool for me. Now, if you're reading this post from LinkedIn, I know I'm preaching to the choir. But if you were at that event last week with me and you know one of the 7 people currently not on LinkedIn, wouldn't you agree that:

• It's a great name-sourcer, whether you're in Sales, Marketing or Recruiting;
• For Recruiters and HR folks: it gives you a running start on reference checks;
• It's so much better than just plain Outlook contacts, that many CRM platforms now integrate with LinkedIn;
• The "Open to" choices on the bottom of your respective profiles allow you to customize your audience on LinkedIn, e.g. that if you're not open to Career Opportunities, you simply uncheck the box;
• How nimble the update tools are for LinkedIn profiles (and, BTW, you can turn the functionality off so every time you update something on your LinkedIn profile, it doesn't appear on your news feed);
• If you're meeting someone in person for the first time, you know what they look like thanks to their LinkedIn profile;
• If you've met someone at an event and forgotten what they look like, their LinkedIn photo will thankfully remind you;
• If you care about one of those 7 folks' success, you'll invite them to join LinkedIn today and show them how to get their LinkedIn success path started.

Bottom-line: if your goal is career or entrepreneurial success (or both): be found on LinkedIn.

     

Diamonds or Toads: How Your Hiring Authorities Help (or Hurt) Your Company's Reputation

My brother teases me for retaining my 20 year-old AOL email address.  Call me sentimental:  it's the account Joel and I created the year we were married.  It doesn't have any numbers in it.  My AOL account is a repository for merchant emails, so I basically skim it once a day.

When I opened up AOL this morning, I saw the story on the news feed about the store manager who allegedly told the applicant with 1.5 arms that he would not be able to work in her store because of products placed on a high shelf. (Apparently, the store manager experienced interview amnesia and forgot the store had both a step-stool and a ladder, standard gear for a retail store).  The applicant appears to be a nice, stand-up guy with 11 years of uninterrupted service and retail work experience and a sterling reference from his last manager.  The same applicant who the store manager during a 15-minute interview also allegedly ridiculed for working at Victoria's Secret while allegedly simultaneously sexually harassing her co-interviewer about her bra size.

What immediately popped in my mind was not my 20+ years of hiring and HR legal experience:  it was the Toads and Diamonds fable.  You know:  the fable about the two sisters who are tested by a fairy at the well disguised as a thirsty old woman.

The kind sister, who immediately gives the old woman a drink of water, is blessed with the gift of diamonds, pearls and flowers spilling from her mouth every time she speaks.

The nasty sister, who shooed the old woman away instead of giving her a drink of water, is given the curse of toads and vipers falling from her mouth every time she speaks; and is consequently shunned and shortly thereafter dies in a corner of the forest.

The kind sister wins marriage with a prince she meets in the forest with her new gift.   The Middle Ages' version of career success for women.  But I digress.

Hiring authorities at every level, from CEO to store manager, assume great power and equally great responsibility.

Most hiring authorities understand this role, and represent their companies adequately:  that is, they don't violate the law during the interview or engage in insulting behavior, leaving their job applicants with a neutral experience. No diamonds or toads.  The prediction would be that their customers have a neutral, shredded wheat-type experience, too.  Not the best stance against their competitors, but not the worst.

Some hiring authorities are on a power-trip doomed for personal and reputational failure, acting like the capos at the gates of Auschwitz treating job applicants like prisoners of war.  "Go to the right, and I'll grant you the privilege of working for me," the little power-mad voice in their heads sings.  "Go to the left and be condemned to continued unemployment."  Certainly not freedom through work.  And certainly not companies you would want support with your patronage or your employment.  A nest of vipers and toads to make Indiana Jones sweat, indeed.

And then there are the bleeding-edge hiring authorities and companies who get it. Who have clear values, visions and missions, and know how to walk the talk accordingly and consistently. Who recruit for the diversity in their candidates that equals or exceeds the diversity of their customers.  Who hire managers and hiring authorities who also walk the talk accordingly and consistently, and make available those who don't to industry.  Who understand all too well that their reputations pivot equally on how they recruit their employees and how they recruit their customers. And that the strategies for both employee and customer recruitment / retention are inextricably linked for long-term success.  These are the diamonds and pearls of the leading companies that we want to patronize as customers and where we want to work as employees, leaders and vendors.

Personally, I find diamonds and pearls most becoming.

Doing the Job During the Interview Benefits Everyone at Work

As I mentioned in this post last November, one of my best experiences of doing the job in the interview was when Bill, the best mentor / manager of my career to date, gave us both a break from the formal interview and asked me to write a press holding statement based on a chemical accident scenario he provided, giving me 15 minutes to do so.  I loved it.  I banged out the holding statement in 5 minutes and handed it over to him.  Bill looked at me, looked at his co-interviewer and smiled.  I knew then that I had the job.  More importantly, I had the wonderful experience of witnessing Bill's appreciation for my talent and abilities as part of the interview process.  Because Bill had the insight as the hiring authority to ask me to do the job in the interview, we had each other at hello.  It was the beginning of a rewarding work experience for both of us.

This past week, a colleague took this best practice one step further and invited their lead candidate to work in the office with them for 3 hours.   Clever Colleague wanted to see how Lead Candidate conducted themselves as they completed a key task together.  Both Colleague and Candidate were pleased, and both are now truly ready to seal the deal with a job offer.  

Clever Colleague was also smart enough to know (without prompting from me) that they should pay Lead Candidate for their work demonstration time.  

This is a best practice because it takes the hiring process out of the theoretical chatter that is the banal and tired employment interview and brings it into the realm of actually demonstrating the work that needs to be done by the prospective employee (vendor) to successfully fill the needs of the job at hand.

It just like good theatrical writing:  show me, don't tell me.  If you don't have the skill to demonstrate how you can you best meet the needs of your next employer (customer), you become like a forgettable movie ending:  like the bad narrative that someone else forced Harrison Ford to do at the end of Ridley Scott's first theatrical release of Blade Runner.  It just doesn't ring true, and it does not do you as the candidate (vendor) any justice at all.  (Or, as illustrated by my favorite line from Human Resources interviewees who have no HR experience:  "I'm really great with people.")

Work demonstration does not need to be just the hiring authority's idea during the employment sourcing process:  how have you (and will you) proactively demonstrate by doing the job in the interview that you will concretely meet / exceed your new employer's needs?  Is it a press release, a custom Crystal report, a draft marketing plan for your first 90 days in your new role?  The creative possibilities are endless, for both vendors and customers.  Make your best work demonstration offer to the decision-maker.

This week:  show us what you can do at work.

Be the Vendor (Not the Applicant) in the Job Interview (Sale!)

It's a point-of-view game-changer:  are you an applicant in a job interview, or a vendor?  I've witnessed the paradigm-shift as I've coached two talented professionals over the last month.  It's like watching the switch flip back to the authentic human capital offering.

Approaching a job interview as an applicant forces you into the frame of supplicant. Beggar. When you approach the interview in the sad context that the hiring authority is doing you a favor by talking to you, you're just another dancer in the Chorus Line, murmuring the meaningless mantra of "God, I hope I get it."  Oh, you'll get it all right.  Rejected, with that attitude.  You're starting out one-down from the hiring authority, in the supplicant's unmistakable veil of fear.  Fear of rejection; fear of not being able paying your bills, fear of (insert your worst fear).  In this fearful stance of the supplicant, the hiring authority has you at hello.  You're trapped, you're at their mercy and you did to yourself.  Don't get me wrong;  the "What Does He Want from Me, What Should I Try to Be" mantra is not necessarily the recipe for disaster:  supplicants are hired every day.  The hiring authorities who need that kind of control need that kind of applicant who surrenders their personal power for a paycheck.

It doesn't have to be that way.  You control this interview conversation more than you know.

This interesting switch dwells in all of us:  it's just a matter of being open to its possibility and creativity.   In coaching the First Professional, who had not been on an interview in several years and who with real anxiety asked me to put together a top-10 list of the toughest interview questions and answers to expect, I did something unexpected.  "Don't approach this as an applicant," I coached.  "If instead in this meeting you were the vendor providing these services on an outsourced basis for this customer, tell me why you're the vendor they should choose."  The Professional's fear evaporated, and the sparkle returned to their eyes:  the switch was turned on and they instantly empowered themselves.  They proceeded to knock my socks off with their proposal and their energetic self-possession.  They did the same with their new employer the next day.  They were head-and-shoulders above the other candidates in their expertise and self-confidence, who I'm sure were merely supplicants.

It's not just a matter of the supplicant answering the employer's questions correctly:  the real conversation is the subject-matter expert (SME) vendor meeting / exceeding the potential customer's needs.  And as my daddy taught me:  when the customer is doing most of the talking, and is selling you on them and their organization, the signs are positive that you can ask for the order (job), and close the sale.

I saw the switch turned on again today with the second Professional.  While their current employment situation is a bit sketchy due to economic forces, they have several potential "customers" interested in their services next.  The pressure is off, there's no veil of fear, they don't have just one potential customer.  As they engage in their initial customer conversation this week, they can be completely present, authentic and centered as the talented SME Vendor they are, exploring the potential possibilities together with the customer of working together, rather than stoop to some bizarre and hellish personal version of Quiz Show.

May the week ahead present innovative proposals and produce fruitful new partnerships for us all.

Do the Job Before You're Hired

I love Nick Corcodilos of Ask the Headhunter fame.  Among the plethora of gems in his wealth of sage advice for all of us -- candidates and hiring authorities alike -- is his mantra to do the job in the interview.  In other words, a successful interview is not the hiring authority asking you a prescribed set of questions to which you provide a pre-rehearsed set of stock answers.  Think about it:  how do the participants in an artificial conversation like that determine authentically how well they will partner and contribute to the bottom line together, or not?

Instead, Corcodilos encourages candidates to adopt the salesman's stance to discover the business needs the hiring authority has and then effectively provide and demonstrate how their needs will be met / exceeded during the interview.  Clearly, a much more authentic and revealing evaluation.

One of my best experiences of doing the job in the interview was when Bill, the best mentor / manager of my career to date, gave us both a break from the formal interview and asked me to write a press holding statement based on a chemical accident scenario he provided, giving me 15 minutes to do so.  I loved it.  I banged out the holding statement in 5 minutes and handed it over to him.  Bill looked at me, looked at his co-interviewer and smiled.  I knew then that I had the job.  More importantly, I had the wonderful experience of witnessing Bill's appreciation for my talent and abilities as part of the interview process.  Because Bill had the insight as the hiring authority to ask me to do the job in the interview, we had each other at hello.  It was the beginning of a rewarding work experience for both of us.

During this last transformative trip to the Recession Rodeo, my trope or variation on this theme is to do the job before you're hired:  as a 1099 contractor / consultant performing a small / short-term project for the potential employer.  

Doing the job before you're hired via a contract project is all upside.  Both you and the hiring authority get to experience what your shared work life will be like, allowing both parties to assess each other in much more detail than the much shallower artifice of an interview process.  You get to interact with both your potential boss and your potential co-workers in the daily routine of their work environment.  You can weigh the positives and negatives of working with the potential employer more objectively when they are your customer:  frankly, it's less emotional and for the most part, more collegial.  It also levels the playing field to the cost / benefit of a commercial relationship, rather than the often distracting power dynamic of the employer-employee relationship.  

During such a contract trial period, the employer benefits from the product you produce to move their business forward, and you are paid for your work product / talent in the process.  It's a business transaction:  it's a win-win.  

And if one or both parties decide not to move forward with an employment relationship, no harm, no foul.   The employer has not made a bad hiring decision; and you do not have a short tenure on your résumé to explain to the next hiring authority.

Both interview parties -- candidate and hiring authority -- literally putting their money where the static interview used to be:  now that's a human capital investment I can get behind. 

Can't Fill That Job? What is "The Help" Saying About You?

In the 1960's setting of the best-selling book and movie The Help, the reputation management channels were limited, but effective:

• In-person social networks that existed within the two distinct groups in the story:  the white (mostly) segregationist employers and the African-American domestic employees;
• Hard-copy newsletters;
• The telephone;
• And of course, the book, the-story-within-the-story, The Help.

Now as this movie trailer intimates (without giving too much away), the white segregationist Hilly clearly was not an employer-of-choice in Jackson, Mississippi:

As of September 2011, there are exponentially many more available reputation management channels available to talented candidates:  LinkedIn, Twitter and Google are merely the tip of the reputation management channel iceberg. 

And just as you as the CEO / Hiring Authority are using LinkedIn and other reputation management channels to perform research checks on just how talented / savvy your candidates are (or are not), they are performing the same reputation checks on:

• You as the CEO; 
• Your leadership team; 
• How you treat your customers; 
• How you conduct yourselves from a values standpoint;
• What the press says about you, good and bad;
• What your organization's long-range value proposition is;
• And most importantly, how you treat your employees.

Savvy candidates, among other methods, can do a simple search on LinkedIn to find your current employees in their own networks, virtual or in-person.  And they're performing reference checks on you. How do you and your organization hold up?  Do you know?

A sure sign to me as a recruiter that an organization is in trouble in any of the above areas is how many applications I receive from the current employees of an organization.  I can also confirm my concern by the rate of churn -- employee departures and new hires within a short period of time -- at a particular organization, also thanks to LinkedIn.  Is that the reputation you want to convey?

Hiring is beginning to pick up in certain markets, and SmAlbany is one of them.  The competition for talented candidates is beginning to splinter the good fishing of the candidate barrel that this last recession had created.

Having a hard time finding talented candidates to fill your positions?  Are you listening to the chatter about you and your organization currently buzzing along the multiple reputation management channels?  Are you coming across as Hilly, or as Skeeter?

Have U Prufed Yr LinkedIn Profile to Suport Yr Sucess??

Gentle readers:

I know, it's annoying.  The English Major is at it again.  I'm reading a lot of your LinkedIn profiles and finding typos / errors.

Frankly, this is much worse than finding these typos / errors in your job applications:  please read my advice to you on this front in my earlier post, Thank You Fer Teh Job Oppertunity.  As a recruiter and a hiring authority, the audience for your errors as a job applicant is just me, theoretically.  The advice, however, is universal to all of your reputation management, online or not.

On your LinkedIn profile:  well, it's the entire online community worldwide, viewing your handiwork (or lack thereof) real-time on their Droids, iPads, and related hardware.  It's like a picture posted of you with clumps of spinach in your teeth, in full view of your potential customers / employers.  Hopefully you already know that your LinkedIn profile, unless you've changed your LinkedIn settings, shows up in Google among other search engine results when a hiring authority / potential customer conducts a simple Google check on you. 

So potential decision-makers in Melbourne (and everywhere else) are chuckling ruefully at your lack of precision and attention to detail, and clicking on the next LinkedIn profile in their search results for a vendor, a consultant, a Ruby-On-Rails Developer, an Online Reputation Manager, or a Controller.

And sadly, not calling you for potential career and business opportunities.

Now, intentional misspellings have been used since advertising has existed.  One of my favorite local examples is the beloved ice cream joint, Kurver Kreme.

The LinkedIn examples I've seen recently are clearly not intentional; and in fact, are actually in (ouch) current LinkedIn profile headlines (censored to protect the careless):

• Business Developement Manager at xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx  (a U.S. profile, FYI)

• Marketing anager at xxxxxx xxxxx xxxxxxxxxxx

• Human Resoruce Manager at xxxx xxxxxx xxxxxx

• Here's a doozy - not just one but multiple misspellings at the top of this person's LinkedIn profile:

            HR Manger at xxxx xxxxxxxx

Xxxxxx xxxxxx  | Human Resources

328 connections

Current:

HR Manger at xxxx xxxxxxx

Past:

HR Buisness partner at xxxx xxxxxx

Manger at  xxxxxxx

                  Recruitment Manger at xxxx xxxxx

Now I know that after experiencing both an earthquake and a hurricane within the same week, we all need a little Christmas, right this very minute, with the serene visualization of a manger scene.  But please:  not in your LinkedIn profile, unintentionally!

By the way:  by entering misspelled words into the powerful LinkedIn search engine, I was able to generate a list of nearly one million LinkedIn users with potential misspellings in their LinkedIn profiles.  Yikes!

So, gentle readers:  get thee to Merriam-Webster Online and a trusted editing buddy and fix your LinkedIn profile typos, fast, to best support your online reputation as well your ongoing success.

Hire Smarter Than You to Succeed

The entrepreneurs and business owners in my network by and large already know that they need to hire folks who are smarter than them in key areas in order to build their businesses.  As their businesses grow to a certain point, they know full well that they need to hire the talent and the subject-matter expertise (SME) they don't personally possess as the CEO in order to take their businesses to the next level.

A key success factor for these entrepreneurs is their status as life-long learners.  As Tom Peters tweeted over the weekend:  "Came to agreement with very senior team that one of 2 or 3 most important traits in a senior exec is childlike compulsive curiosity."  In other words, the most successful entrepreneurs love to learn, and they especially love to learn from their SMEs.

These go-getters are clearly secure about their own accomplishments and their roles as business owners and leaders, so feeling threatened by say, an Accounting SME or a Logistics SME they hire (whether they're an employee, a consultant, or a temp-to-perm SME), to bring structure and consistency into their business isn't even on their radar.  Their hunt is to build the team that's going to make their business successful and grow.

Unfortunately, this model is not yet consistently endemic to the employee-leadership paradigm, e.g. non-owner managers and leaders who hire employees.  And they didn't start the fire, frankly.  Most organizational performance / compensation paradigms still reward just individual performance, not the badly needed manager-employee team and/or organizational performance incentives.  In other words, most managers are still held accountable just for their own performance, which creates an inbred culture of finger-pointing at subordinates and ultimately, abstaining from accountability to the performance of the organization as a whole.

I have been lucky enough to have worked with a few non-owner employee managers who chose to put out the fire of that mediocre paradigm and hire SMEs who were smarter to support mutual and organizational success.

It was woven into the fabric of the GE culture.  The manager who hired me into GE saw me eventually becoming the head of GE Public Relations.  "You're a mini-Joyce,"  Chuck would often say to me.  Chuck's prediction did not come true, but I always appreciated his faith in my abilities.

Another GE manager, Bill (who at this writing, is the best manager I've experienced in my career), firmly believed that the success of his employees equaled his success.  And as I mentioned in an earlier blog post lifting up Bill's leadership qualities:  instead of keeping me in position to ensure that his work got done, his goal was to get me promoted:  the merit badge of a manager's / mentor's success.  And he did, pushing me to a promotion at another business unit, even though I wanted to stay in my job, as a member of his team.  But he was right, as usual.

Consequently, I seized the opportunity to pay it forward when I was in a similar leadership role.  When the time came for me to hire a Recruiting Manager, I hired Alison, who is an AIRS-trained recruiting maven and SME.  A great deal of my knowledge base as a Recruiting SME is thanks to what I learned from Alison.  I'm happy to report that Alison subsequently followed her entrepreneurial bliss as the owner of her own successful recruiting firm.

I am a grateful student, indeed.

Banish Bitter and Blotchy From the Interview (Sales Call)

Several years ago, I sat at my company's booth at a large job fair. I was alone covering the booth as the other members of my recruiting team were out on a break.  

A job-seeker approached the booth:  a gentleman with salt-and-pepper hair, dressed in a nice navy suit, red silk tie, polished shoes, equipped with a leather portfolio and linen paper résumés.  On the outside, he looked great, quite hireable.  On the inside:  he was a mess and he proceeded to over-share with me (A career-long occupational hazard for me:  I'm a recruiter, among other SME gears, yet candidates more often than not mistake me for their therapist, whether it's on the phone or in person.).  "Hi!" he chirped, slapping one of his résumés on the booth counter.  "Need an accountant?"  I smiled back.  "Not at the moment.  However, I'd be happy to have your résumé in the event we need one in the future."  

His face fell, and he was visibly annoyed.  "It's because I'm 53, right?" he insisted.  He shook his head.  "It's why my boss let me go, and it's why I can't get hired:  no one wants to hire anyone over 40."  He began to walk away before I could even respond.  Usually, I'd let bitter-and-blotchy candidates like him go their miserable way.   The first candidate contact is like the first date:  candidates are (theoretically) on their best behavior, and hiring bitter-and-blotchy usually doesn't end well.   But he was clearly discouraged and clueless, not a winning combination.

"Excuse me, please don't walk away," I requested.  The job-seeker turned around, surprised.  "Are you talking to me?" he asked.  "Yes please, if you don't mind:  I can't leave the booth right now," I replied.  He came back to the booth, clearly curious.  

I leaned over the booth counter.  "I know why you're not getting hired.  Are you interested in hearing why?"  He nodded.  "You need to move past how your last boss hurt you, and let it go," I confided.  "And if you can't do it yourself, ask someone you trust to help you work on it, so you won't ever speak to a hiring manager like that again."  He was a bit stunned.  "I am hurt," he said, sadness replacing anger.  "I know," I replied gently.  "And it's stopping people from hiring you."

He paused for a moment.  "I've never had a recruiter speak to me like this before. I appreciate the feedback, but why are you telling me this?"

I smiled.  "Because you have a great résumé, and I just hired a 73 year-old last week."  

He laughed, and thought for a moment.  "Well, I have a good friend who's a Vice President of Human Resources:  I could buy him a cup of coffee and talk it through with him."

"Perfect, please do!"  I said,  extending my hand.  "Good luck."  He shook my hand.  "Thank you for telling me."  he said. "I appreciate your honesty."

I know what you're thinking:  how could this candidate not know the impact he was making with his bitter-and-blotchy presentation and baggage, especially spewing his grief and anger all over a hiring authority / decision-maker?   It's pretty simple:  a lot of folks are so verklempt over their losses and challenges that their feelings are driving the bus instead of their common sense and sales ability.  They're not focused on consciously managing their changes.

Change Management SME's emphasize that in order for people to effectively manage change, they must achieve some closure with the past and let it go, so they can move forward and resiliently embrace change.

Whether you're selling yourself in an interview, or selling your product to a potential customer (same thing in my reckoning),  leave the past and the bitter-and-blotchy attitude behind:  so you can move forward, close the sale and build your success.

Get a Job (Or Find an Employee, Customer or Vendor) on LinkedIn, The New Career Frontier!

After only 5 months after their layoff from a slowly dying organization, Recently Laid-Off Colleague #1 got a great job offer this week at a growth-economy firm, at a salary higher than their last job.

The only place their new job was posted was on LinkedIn.

#1's new boss called me for a reference.  She already knew about my background and relationship to #1, because she looked up my profile on LinkedIn before she picked up the phone.  A new network connection was born, and I look forward to meeting #1's new boss in the near future.  We both agreed that #1 was a great find, given their esoteric skill set and how difficult, in any economy, to source talented candidates like #1 in that particular discipline.

Yet another reason why I love LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is like a multi-dimensional Rolodex (and much more!) for me:  I grow and keep track of my network and my business on LinkedIn.  It is a wonderful tool that perfectly complements my in-person networking / connecting, as I network for both fun and profit.

How is LinkedIn working for you, and how are you working LinkedIn?  Connect with me here or on LinkedIn, and share your LinkedIn experience, strength, hope and success! too.

OMG YR FIRED ;(

I recently heard through my network of a text-message employee termination, which was brief and in the neighborhood of the following:

Pls don't report to work tmrw; not working out; will pay out yr notice.

I shared the story with my husband, Joel.  "The employer could have just tied the termination note to a rock and thrown it through the employee's car window," he replied in disbelief.  "That really happened?"  I nodded sadly.  "Really, really cheesy." Joel said sadly. "That goes beyond cheesy.  It's like 'Hi, I'm breaking up with you; and oh, by the way, I have herpes.'"

Sometimes I fear that popular media examples of poor people management practices, like firing NPR Correspondent Juan Williams via the phone without due process and/or a progressive corrective action program, unduly influences some harried and hapless employers to hear what they like and leave the rest (E.g., the reputational flak that results from such attention:  could it be true that there's no such thing as bad P.R.?  Best to ask NPR's former CEO, who eventually lost her job as a result.)

Or could it be that some employers believe they have the ultimate power in an employer-employee relationship, giving them carte blanche to freestyle employee hiring, firing and relations?

There are three barriers to such freestyle misconceptions on the part of misguided employers:  legal compliance, reputation and customers.

Failure to observe legal compliance in employee relations exposes employers to legal, financial and reputational risk.  A roll of the employer-freestyling dice here can spell the end of a business.  Can you say "lawsuit judgment?"  Courtesy of a former employee or government regulatory entity, or both?

Reputation can make or break the recruitment and retention of both customers and employees, particularly in a local economy like SmAlbany.  A colleague and I were chatting discreetly about the vagaries of a local small business whose name we did not mention during our conversation in a remote Starbucks a year ago, when one of their former sales managers serendipitously walked in the door of the shop. The colleague waved to the sales manager and remarked to me in a whisper: "Seriously, the owner is a nut:  he continuously hires sales managers only to let them go in about 6 months.  That poor guy is the owner's latest victim, and everyone in the business community knows it."

And finally, and most importantly, customers.  It has been my observation and experience, and recently documented in Guy Kawasaki's Enchantment, that there is absolutely a direct connection on how well (or poorly) you treat your employees and how well (or poorly) in turn your employees will treat your customers.  And how well (or poorly) your customers patronize you as a vendor long-term as a result of mistreatment by your employees; mistreatment by you as the owner; or hearing about your mistreatment of your employees.  In other words:  treat your employees like hammered cow pies, and run the risk of your customers being treated like hammered cow pies, too:  and having both consequently conduct business with one of your competitors.

Bottom-line advice:  reserve text-messaging and other remote media for good news.  For both good news and the tough messages:  nothing beats face-to-face communications, supported with SME (subject-matter expertise) advice and compliant documentation, to drive authentic, accountable and courageous relationships, which in turn will only reinforce reputation and retention with both internal (employees) and external customers.

;)

Who is the Decision-Maker?

Shortly after Joel and I got married, his lemon-of-a-junker car finally gave up the ghost:  a bad referral from his family's Manchester, Vermont network. Since we lived in North Chatham, Columbia County, and we worked in diametrically opposite directions (me in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, in the Berkshires, at General Electric Aerospace and Joel in Albany, New York, at Crossgates Mall, as Manager / Head Picture-Framer at Deck the Walls), a new car purchase became a priority for our family, as car-pooling was clearly not an option.

After some quick and thorough research courtesy of Consumer Reports, that year's Mitsubishi mini-SUV became our purchase goal, as it more than met our reliability and functional needs.  We journeyed from our rural rental house into the outskirts of the Brunswick section of Troy, NY and paid a visit to the dealer on Route 7.

We entered the dealership, and examined the floor model of our intended car purchase.  An older, stouter gentlemen with glasses, salt-and-pepper hair (tie-less and blazer-less, a good sign for Joel) made eye contact with us, put down his book and approached us.  That is, he made eye contact with me:  Joel purposely kept his Ray-Bans on, looking like a cross between Elwood Blues and the sax player from The Blues Brothers.  His contribution to our purchase negotiations:  the silent and vaguely forbidding bad cop.  Joel took a quick glance at the cover of the salesman's book:  it was an Arthur C. Clarke book.  "That's a good sign," Joel noted softly to me.

I nodded, still a bit wary. Buying a car was always a Women's Studies 101 field trip for me.  At best, it usually started out with an obnoxious elevator visual evaluation of me from the aloof sales guy, and then the standard "Where's your father / boyfriend / husband to help you with this?"

The salesman extended his hand to both of us.  "Hi folks, what can I do for you today?"  I pointed at the mini-SUV.  "We're interested in this model, for the right price." I replied.  "Great! Let's sit down," he said, gesturing to the two chairs in front of his desk.  We settled in the chairs.

The salesman looked at both of us, and then asked a brilliant question:  "Please let me know who will be signing the loan paperwork:  both of you, or one of you?  I'd like to direct my discussion to the person who will actually buy the car."  Joel and I grinned at each other, and then at the salesman:  he had us at hello.  "It's me,"  I replied.  "Great," the salesman replied, pulling out the paperwork.  "Let's get started."  We got a great price, and they even took the dead lemon as a trade-in, towing it to the dealership for us.  The Mitsubishi lasted 11 years, a great buy.

Do you know who the decision-maker is when you:

• Interview for a job? (Hint:  unless you're interviewing for a job in the Human Resources Department, it's not HR);
• Make an appointment with a new company as a potential sales prospect?
• Refer contacts in your network to potential business?
• Refer mentees in your network to potential employers?
• Network for potential business, contract and employment referrals?
• Get an appointment with a company without posted job openings but who you know needs your skills and experience as an employee badly enough to hire you virtually on the spot?
• Are the customer and need your vendor to resolve an issue that is not clearly dictated by established policy?

And if you don't know:  do you take the extra step and ask who the decision-maker is?

As was the experience of our sage car salesman:  identifying the decision-maker makes the difference between closing (or losing) the sale.

How many decision-makers are on your call / meeting list this week?

Reputation Makes Recruiting, PR and Marketing Ring True (Or False)

One night earlier in my recruiting career, I was uncharacteristically awake past 10 PM.  When I'm up this late with nothing interesting to read or watch, I turn on the t.v. for background noise and catch up on my work email.

A new email pinged in at 10:25 PM, not from a colleague but from an executive-level candidate responding to a query email I had sent earlier that day.  Here's what it said:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Good evening:

There's no amount of money you could pay me to come and work for your company.  The (hiring manager) is a flaming asshole and everyone in the industry knows it.  Good luck with your search, your (sic) going to need it.

Sent from my BlackBerry
Please forgive any typos
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It startled me.  My husband Joel heard me gasp and woke up.  "What's wrong?" he asked, startled himself.

"Look at this email!  I've never seen anything like it from a candidate before," I replied, offering the laptop screen for him to view.  Joel smirked.  "I'm sure he's drunk," he concluded. 

I shook my head, bewildered at the candidate's carelessness.  "Friends shouldn't let friends email drunk.  Doesn't this guy care about his reputation in the industry?"  Joel arched a sage eyebrow at me.  "Well, is the hiring manager an asshole?"  I smirked my reply back.  Joel went back to sleep.

Just a few weeks after the drunken candidate email, I was networking on the phone with another industry executive to solicit candidates for the same job.  He was coldly cordial and (I presume) soberly to the point.  "I hear nothing good about your leadership team.  Your company doesn't have a great reputation out in the market.  Your sales have sucked for the past few years, and I predict you'll be out of business in the next 3 - 5 years."  I thanked him for his time and hung up.

Now, I love recruiting.  However, I listened to these two poignant and juxtaposed data points and came to the conclusion that no matter how good a recruiter I am, including but not limited to how positive an ambassador I am for my organization, no amount of recruiting lipstick was going to make the organization's reputational pig pretty. 

As the job market and the overall economy continue to rev up in fits and spurts, it's important to engage in organizational listening, in social media and other channels, to understand what your customers, candidates, vendors, etc. are saying about your organization.  And more importantly, to incorporate that listening into both your external and internal customer interactions, to ensure that the communication is consistently authentic.

Have a lot of open positions to fill and not getting a lot of candidates?  What's the word on the market about you and/or your organization?  What does my girlfriend Google say?  Or surely, you should have some inkling:  could it be the 20% of your workforce that you shed during the worst of the recession?  Or the chronic complaints from your customers about your service?  Whatever the facts are for your organization, consider addressing them proactively, factually, productively and future-facing.  And ensure that the recruiting, public relations and marketing streams are integrated, singing the same authentic message about your people and your products.

What's the word on the market about you and your organization?  And what are you proactively doing to address the message authentically?

The Interview as Business Proposal: And the Product is You

The job market is starting to pick up, thankfully, and many of you have job interviews this week.  I'm thrilled for you:  break a leg.

Some of you are spending the evening with one eye on the Super Bowl and multi-tasking with Google and the very best intentions to find the ultimate answer to the ubiquitous (and uninspired) question, "Where do you see yourself in 5 years?"  Your navy suit, which will telegraph trust to your (hopefully) new employer, is pressed and ready on its hanger in the closet.  Your alarm is set. You've Google-Mapped the (new) employer's address. Your portfolio is stocked with multiple copies of your resume'.  You're drinking O'Doul's to ensure that you're bright-eyed in the morning.

A much smaller percentage of you are finalizing the proposal / presentation of how you're going to meet / exceed the business needs of your future employer (read:  customer).  You've done your homework and your metrics are crisp and to the point.  The customer is expecting a potential employee, and you will knock their socks off by exceeding their expectations as a potential strategic supplier, in-sourced or out-sourced.  You will present the product that you know the best:  you.  You will also conduct the same preparations that your competitor candidates are currently undertaking, e.g. the well-pressed suit, etc., but your unique selling proposition -- that puts you ahead of the pack -- is that you understand your meeting tomorrow is a sales presentation to meet the new customer's needs, not just an interview.  And if you've played your cards right, you're the only candidate, because you've made the right connections thanks to your network to reach the decision-maker before they've even thought of advertising their needs to the open market.

How do I know?  I've done it and won it myself.  Several times.

And you will, too.  Happy hunting; let us know how it goes.

Who Am I, Anyway? Am I My Resume'?

When I was a freshman in high school, our Social Studies teacher, Mr. Treacey, and his wife (who also taught at the high school), took us to see A Chorus Line at the Schubert Theater in New York City.  (What that field trip had to do with Social Studies, I don't know, but it was great and cemented my love of the theater.)

That's where I first heard the word "resume'," in the opening song, I Hope I Get It,

Here are the lyrics:

Who am I, anyway?
Am I my resume'?
That is a picture of a person I don't know.

What does he want from me?
What should I try to be?
So many faces all around, and here we go.
I need this job, oh God, I need this show.

I always found those lyrics poignant and haunting on a visceral level.  Now, as an adult, I have the perspective and the language to say why.

For me, whatever side of the interview table I sit on, candidate or hiring authority, it's all about authenticity.

I can't dance.  Not at all. I have no talent for it.   So, I would never put myself - or the decision-maker -  through the rigor / torture of a dance audition.  In A Chorus Line, however, some of the characters can't really dance either, but audition anyway because they're passionate about dancing.  And they subsequently, one by one, don't get selected.  Don't get me wrong:  my heart breaks a little every time one of them doesn't make the cut.  However, the kid from Queens inside of me wonders what the hell they were doing there in the first place.  I know, it's just a play.  I'm just sayin'.

Passion without talent, or talent without passion, is the same:  inauthentic.  And inauthentic doesn't make the cut.

For that reason, I mentor those who seek career guidance from me to first and foremost identify the authentic intersection(s) between their talent and their passion.  And for most people, including me, there are several potential talent / passion intersections to discover and/or confirm.  With the assistance of a mentor, an independent assessment, or any combination thereof.

Without consciously and thoroughly determining those talent / passion intersections, any resume' - or proposal - will ring hollow with potential decision-makers, employers and customers.  But most importantly, with the candidate themselves, undermining confidence and bottom-line authenticity.

For example:  I love to sing; and I'm a good singer.  I know it, and others have confirmed it:  they let me stay in the church choir.

What are your authentic talent / passion intersections? Have you validated those intersections with a knowledgeable and equally authentic third party?  Are those intersections clearly outlined on your resume'?  

And most importantly, are you ready to win the audition?

Talented Mentee For Hire! (Pass It On!)

I'd like to introduce you to Hilda, one of my talented mentees. I hired Hilda 6 years ago to be the site Human Resources Manager for our West Coast Distribution Center in California. So Hilda was there when we acquired the site, and she was part of the team that closed down the DC this month as part of ongoing consolidations caused by industry and economic changes.

I'd hire Hilda again in a heartbeat.

If you're looking for a talented HR Manager based about 15 miles south of LAX, you can find Hilda's profile here, on LinkedIn.

And if for some reason you are not on LinkedIn, send me an email and I'll forward you Hilda's contact information. Here's the unsolicited recommendation I posted on Hilda's LinkedIn profile:

"I personally recruited and hired Hilda in 2004 as the site Human Resources Manager for our West Coast distribution center and merchandising branch office, and I would not hesitate to hire Hilda again. She is a highly skilled HR professional with the ability to remain calm, empathetic and firm regardless of the situation or issue. Because of her skills and demeanor, she was very much respected by her colleagues and her internal customers during her 6-year tenure: critical for the success of any seasoned HR practitioner. Both the Vice President of Logistics and I considered Hilda to be a key member of the site leadership team, and in fact, we both considered her as potential bench for the site General Manager position: that's how strong a business partner she is.

Hilda's strong knowledge of California labor law and compliance was invaluable as we ramped up our operations in 2004, and her strong recruiting skills ensured that the DC was always properly staffed. Hilda is only on the market as a result of the closing of West Coast operation this past year (which she also helped facilitate), and that availability will greatly benefit the next organization lucky enough to hire Hilda into her next career position."

I'm proud to personally and professionally vouch for Hilda, and to do so in a proactive and public manner. There are a few motivating reasons, and the first and most important reason is to support Hilda in expeditiously securing her next job.

Secondly, to share as a best practice.  I've used a variation of this method for another talented mentee before: Laurie. She came to me shortly after returning from maternity leave, and asked for my help: the combination of the childcare and the commute wasn't working out, and she needed an HR job closer to home. I was touched by her authenticity and yet was not surprised by it at all, knowing full well how talented she is. I helped her get her C.V. ready, and in an out-of-the-box move (an updated variation of the networking theme that my first manager Nan started with me), I sent it via an email singing her praises to all of the heads of HR (about 38 of them) within a 10-mile radius of Laurie's home. One of them responded immediately (and wisely), hiring Laurie within the week into a position that had not yet been advertised. We then negotiated a transition until Laurie and I could hire her replacement. Laurie was subsequently promoted to the AVP of HR for her new organization.  Your basic win-win.

Aside from championing Hilda to her next position, I also want to encourage all of you, my fellow hiring-authorities and decision-makers, to use your discretionary power to champion the jewels of talent you know and/or mentor, and who have been arbitrarily and capriciously cast out onto the market of an economy that none of us ever imagined.

Proactively "pre-recommend" these available talent jewels by sending their information to other hiring-authorities and decision-makers. (And if this has been your practice especially during this last recession, please share your success stories here and elsewhere and spread the best practice so it can expand and grow!)

The economically impacted (the laid-off) do not need to become the next marginalized class. Those of us who have sat on both sides of the layoff table and who are currently in hiring-authority and decision-maker positions (there but for the grace of God go we!) absolutely have the power to shift that now-outdated paradigm: that if someone has been laid off, they must be inferior human capital. It is, more often than not, in these economic times, a false assessment, and I can personally prove it.  Hilda is just one of a number of shining examples to that passe' paradigm's contrary.

Years ago, in diversity training, we learned that if we were in one of the real / perceived power groups (male, Caucasian etc.), that we had a choice: that we could each personally shift the paradigm by using our discretionary power, and be inclusive of folks in more marginalized groups, rather than exclude them by default, ignorance or fear. Today, no one is more potentially marginalized than the laid-off and the unemployed. Thankfully, we have a choice: we can see them for the jewels of talent they are, and we, the employed hiring-authorities and decision-makers, can use our discretionary power and stand up personally, professionally, and publicly for them, and ultimately, for each other.

Or as my 9 year-old son learned in Sunday school:

"He drew a circle that shut me out— Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. But Love and I had the wit to win: We drew a circle that took him in!" 

-- Edwin Markham