Bearing Fruit Consulting

Hanging Out With The Cool Kids at Fistful Of Talent

Just wanted to point you all in the direction of my latest post over on Fistful Of Talent.  The title of the post is Hanging With The Cool Kids In The Talent Pool and it appears today. 

I consider the whole posse over at FOT to be "cool kids" so I feel as though I am blessed to be in their company.  Seriously, there are some really smart, witty and innovative HR and recruiting practitioners in that group. 

I still can't figure out how I got into that group!

Another Letter From Fred Hockett - Recruiting Leader Serving in Iraq

As regular readers of this blog know, we have been sharing the story and letters of Fred Hockett.  Fred is a recruiting leader from Michigan who was called to active duty in January and is currently serving in Iraq.  I have talked previously about Fred and I admire his leadership, recruiting knowledge, courage and commitment to his country.  He is a great guy and I want to continue to share his story with our readers.

Before I share Fred's latest letter, written on June 17th, I want to point out that at the end of his recent communication he indicates he is open to answering any questions (that he can without jeopardizing himself, his men/women or the mission) that you might have.  If you have any questions send them to me via email at mhomula@bearingfruitconsulting.com and I will be sure to pass them along to Fred and we will post your question and his answer in a future post. 

Also, if you want to follow Fred via his own blog there is a lot more information and detail there.  The blog was primarily set up for his family and friends to keep up with him, his activities and just generally know what is going on.  It is a great blog and I encourage you to check it out. 

Without further ado, here is Fred's latest letter!

I'm sorry about the delay in writing you.  We've been moving at a pretty rapid pace here, and as you can imagine I've been doing everything to just keep in contact with family.  It's surprising how quickly time passes.  I'm almost at 4 months in theater.  Things are still very challenging, but rewarding.  The easiest task is made very difficult due to proximity to logistics.  Needless to say we don't have a Home Depot to go to when we can to do a room renovation.  I find myself working on that type of thing most often, coordinating logistics.  It's a great deal of fun.

As you are probably reading in the paper things are quieting down.  The Iraqi military and police have undertaken several operations in the area to quell the violence and they are doing a pretty good job.  Our teams are out working with them on a regular basis and we have people coordinating with the Ministries all the time. We all continue to see progress every day... most of it is the tangible, physical progress: Construction projects, new roads, graduating police officers, etc.  It's the other, less tangible, results that are even more encouraging: the coaching and mentoring going on, people "getting it" after working very hard to understand our methods, Iraqis taking the lead on operations.  These are the critical bricks in our path home. 

I'm very excited about my vacation in August.  My dad, brother and I will be heading out for a guys weekend.  I'm also attending the wedding of a friend in Kalamazoo and visiting other friends in Chicago.  After I return here, I'm down to 4 months left and I return to states in January.  Crazy how time flies. 

I'll close for now, but if you have any specific questions, I'd be happy to answer them.  My job is a lot of different things, but nothing really exciting enough to write about.  It would be boring if there wasn't so much of it. :)  Have a great day and I look forward to visiting while I'm at home.

Your friend,

Fred

What If Karl Marx Were The Director of Recruiting?

My partner in crime at Fistful of Talent, Tim Tolan, had an excellent post yesterday entitled Looking For Talent?  Always Look Outside Your Company.  It is part of a point/counter point discussion between Tim and the mighty Kris Dunn for a Workforce Management series.  I have many thoughts on this topic so I decided to share some of them with you here. 

I am going to come right out and say it.  I think organizations with documented process or policy that require them to look at and/or hire internal talent absent a side by side comparison with external talent are practicing a form of talent management/recruiting communism.  Let me explain.

When I was the Director of Talent Acquisition at Quicken Loans we had a saying within the organization that went something like "What got us where we are will not get us where we want to go."  The point is that what you have done and the work you have done up until this point will not necessarily breed success in the future.  Great organizations need to constantly evolve and get better.  Rarely can this type of performance improvement evolution happen without an influx of talent from outside the walls of the organization.  Constant promotion from within is a form of corporate "inbreeding" that is dangerous and often leads to innovation stagnation, acceptance of norms, inefficiency and general acceptance of mediocre performance. 

More after the jump!

E Is For EDUCATE - Creating The Ultimate Candidate Experience

All You Need Is L.O.V.E.D. and the BFC "love in" on how to create the ultimate candidate experience continues.  It's probably a good idea to recap where we are and what we have covered.

First, we introduced the basics of creating the ultimate candidate experience in the form of an acronym - L.O.V.E.D.  The goal is to make every candidate feel L.O.V.E.D. 

We then began breaking down our acronym and started, logically, with L is for  LISTEN, moved on to O is for OWN and then V is for VALIDATE.  The emails on this topic have been very interesting and there has even been some discussion of these posts around the blogosphere.  Many have requested that I share a template for a Candidate Bill of Rights which I will be sure to do in a later post.

Let's move on to our next letter in the acronym - E is for EDUCATE.  More after the jump.

V Is For VALIDATE - Creating The Ultimate Candidate Experience

The BFC version of a "love in" continues today.  As we have been discussing, creating the ultimate candidate experience requires that you make every candidate feel L.O.V.E.D.  We started the series with an overview and then moved on to cover both L (for Listen) and O (for Own).  Today we move into a discussion on V and, continuing with our Sesame Street style for this topic, V is for VALIDATE. 

No, I am not talking about Stuart Smalley type validation (you probably have to be over a certain age to get that reference) and this isn't about self help affirmation therapy or anything remotely close to that.  Once a candidate is in process with you or your organization, providing validation at different steps is critical to creating the ultimate candidate experience.  That said, if this tactic is overplayed it could lead to serious problems for you when it comes time to make the offer and close the deal.  Validate as a tactic has to be used very carefully but, when executed well at the appropriate times, it becomes a powerful weapon in creating the ultimate candidate experience. 

Let's take a look at what validating a candidate means and what it looks like.  More after the jump. 

Omaha Stylee Did Not Think There Was One - Maren Hogan Over On FOT

Juiced the title a bit here with a lyric from 311.  Maren Hogan, from Omaha, Nebraska, shows us a little of her Omaha Stylee today over at FOT.  Her post, Like Paris Hilton, You've Got To Work It To Be A Good Recruiter... gets into some interesting ideas around what sourcing and recruiting really are as well as what the perception of those concepts might be. 

An interesting discussion is starting to unfold with her post as well.  Of course, never without an opinion, I jumped into the comments and discussion myself. 

Maren is an up and coming recruiting professional who has a pretty diverse background outside of recruiting.  She is fun to talk to and fun to read (her blog is Big O Recruiting)because she hasn't been in recruiting forever and thus has some unique perspectives.  Because of her minimal recruiting industry experience it is also fun to watch her learn and grow in this space right before our very eyes.

By the way, I found an old school skater video using 311's Omaha Stylee as the backdrop music.  It is pretty funny and if you want to check it out it can be found after the jump.    

Moving from ATS to TRMS Over at FOT

Is that enough of an acronym tease for ya?

Just a quick note to alert you all to one of my latest posts over at Fistful of Talent on converting your ATS to a TRMS.  I provide some guidance on how to take your ordinary, process swamped, compliance focused, administrivia driven Animal Tracking System and tweak it to start getting more TRM from it. 

Have a read...if you aren't sick of reading my stuff  yet. 

Jessica Lee On How Lame Careerbuilder Is...errr...Has Always Been

I have become quite the fan of Jessica Lee.  She is a cohort on my other gig over at Fistful of Talent who is smart, brash and has just enough of that "take on the world" mentality to make her just my type.  In short, I dig her approach and the way she thinks. 

Today she unleashed on Careerbuilder and their lame marketing ploys.  Careerbuilder has really sunk to new lows since the funny, witty and engaging monkey bits during the Super Bowl.  Her post is strong and got me so fired up I let loose a tirade in the comments section of her post.

I recommend you check it out! 

If, for some odd reason, you want to just read my comments you can do so after the jump.

O Is For OWN - Creating The Ultimate Candidate Experience

The All You Need Is L.O.V.E.D series on creating the ultimate candidate experience and a candidate bill of rights is continuing today.  Last week we looked at the first letter in our acronym L.O.V.E.D when we focused on L is for LISTEN.

Logically, today we move on to O.  O is for Own.  I am confident that nothing will get you more bang for your buck, so to speak, than executing well with OWN. 

Time and time again we hear from candidates in survey after survey about how they fall into some mysterious black hole or abyss when they apply for a position or talk to a recruiter.  I think it is the same black hole where socks seem to disappear to in the dryer.  If you want to get significantly better results as a recruiter or a recruiting organization you can do yourself a favor and get vastly better at owning your candidates.  Just raising the bar a fraction in this area will set you apart from virtually every other recruiting organization. 

That last statement is a sad indictment of our industry I suppose but it is true.  Recruiters and recruiting organizations are so bad at this aspect of creating the ultimate candidate experience that just being decent at it will put you head and shoulders above the rest.

So what does OWN actually mean you ask?   Great question, let's take a look.

L is for Listen - Creating The Ultimate Candidate Experience

Back on May 20th I introduced the series Creating The Ultimate Candidate Experience =  All You Need Is L.O.V.E.D.  I had a few emails asking questions about the difference between applicant and candidate experience.  This is an an important question and one I plan to address in detail in future posts but, since that is not the focus of this series, I will quickly state that applicants should have a good experience and ease of use.  Candidates need to get the Ultimate Experience as they are more likely to talk about their experience with others because they actually interacted with you and your organization.  The potential for viral impact, both positive and negative, is greater with those that actually engage with your company thought phone screens, interviews and other personal interactions.

To quickly recap, I stated in the introduction to this series that to create the Ultimate Candidate Experience you need to make your candidates feel L.O.V.E.D., an acronym with the following meaning:

• L = Listen
• O = Own
• V = Validate
• E = Educate
• D = Deliver

Let's get this discussion started with the first one, LISTEN.