Recruitment | Bertrand Duperrin's Notepad

Social networks and recruitment 2.0 : does it work well ?

September 1, 2011 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

Summary : Mixed results make people wonder on the relevance of social networks as recruitment tools. It all depends on what one mean by recruiment, because if it’s easy to measure the transactional side, recruitment processes are much broader and are made of diverse elements that can use social networks as catalysts. For reasons due to the job profile, the volume of people to hire or the scalability of the system, social networks won’t always be the right tool to recruit in the strict sense of the the word. But if we take all non-transactional activities into account (such as HR marketing), these tools can act like a process booster and also impact the quality of the final result. But businesses need to consider a broader range of activities and not focus on the number of people hired depending on the media.

A couple of weeks ago, french HR blogger Jean-Noël Chaintreuil wrote on the poorly kepts promise of social networks as a recruitment tool. Did we get it all wrong ? Not a all. First, we need to know what we’re talking about.

Recruitment. If, for many people that are not involved in HR activities, recruitment means placing an advertisement, having interviews and chosing the right person, it’s in fact, a much more complex process. It’s about defining the job, sourcing candidates, choosing the right ones. We can also all what has to do with employer branding that reinforce the attractiveness of the enterprise and the quality of applications (because people know more things about the enterprise, its culture and values..). And even if considered as another process, onboarding programs that will help new hires to be at their best and make their first steps easier are very close to recruitment. As a matter of fact, if we consider that the goal is not to recruit someone but someone who’ll stay and find his/her place in the organization, onboarding programs are an essential part of the recruitment process.

Recruitment 2.0. There’s nothing really new on the nature of recruitment but on execution. As usual, when something turns 2.0, it’s about a better (qualitative and quantitative) use of the knowledge and relational capital of all the stakeholders (including the candidate) to improve the bandwidth of the process and the quality of the result. It comes in many forms. First, finding the means to have a better knowledge of the other and let the other know who you are (employer and personal branding). It also implies a move from mass communication to conversation. Then, it’s about using networks to have “better” applications that fit both the need and the corporate culture as well as a better sourcing. Here, it’s about trust/reputation and the power of weak ties. At the selection level, there are also ways to make the person be chosen not only by his future manager but also the people he’ll work with. To end, new onboarding and immersion programs will complete the traditional mentoring by peers networks.

Obviously, lots of businesses did not wait for the 2.0 era to put some of these things at work. What has changed is that, to make things work on a wide scale, new tools were needed. As a matter of fact, talking about networks to use the available human capital and knowledge is nice but when one can access to few people and is limited to strong ties, the promise is hard to keep. What leads to the next point.

Social Networks. When talking about networks, knowledge and weak ties in 2011, things often come to social networks. But, if we look at the past, social networks are not the only tool that have been (and still are) used to meet recruitment and HR goals. When we started to work on recruitment 2.0 with a couple of french professionals in 2004/2005, the trending topic was blogging. At this moment, media paid a lot of attention to “these bloggers who foun a job because they were active on the web”. To be more precise, most of these people already had a job, bloggint only helped them to meet the people and networks that offered them more appealing jobs in enterprises that were really wanting them for what they were. Then came enterprise HR blogs and, only then, social networks like LinkedIn became mainstream. Today, people talk about Facebook or Twitter even if the latter is not even seen as a network by its founders and is rather about a branding and influence strategy as blogs were before. But, in the end, that’s the same because it all melts in a global strategy.

Now, what do we mean by “recruitment on social networks” ?

With recruitement tests 1.0 you get (outdated) managers 1.0

April 7, 2011 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

Summary : Tomorrow’s managers will need to master a bunch of new know-hows and behiavors that fit into a digital workplace, where information comes in flow through several channels. The rarity of such skills is, in a fact, one the the things that prevent organizations to transform work models today. But, while organizations are struggling to deal with this issue and undertake the right actions in terms of training, the deep cause of the problem is often overlook. As a matter of fact, in the meanwhile, many recruitment tests, most of all for managements, are still aiming at validating skills in contexts that don’t apply anymore to today’s workplace.

A few days ago, I was chatting about recruitment tests with a couple of friend, one of them being about to go through an assessment center process to be hired by a large organization. It reminded me of lots of memories from the time when I was an HR consultant and had to conduct similar things.

So we talked about the kind of tests applicants have to take in such situations and discussed the fact that, if the scenario and methodologies did not perfectly match the requirements for a given position in a given enterprise and the process not conducted with rigor, the whole process may fail.

Among these tests, one is very usual : the “in-basket test”. It’s a simulation where people are briefed about a “virtual” company, its context and are provided with memos, mails etc…. They have a couple of hours to decide what to deal with first, set up action plans, prioritize or delegate things… The purpose is to assess if one has the competences to understand one environment, prioritize, make decisions in a limited amount of time. I have to admit that the test is often very demanding for energy and nerves and I’ve used to be surprised by the number of people I saw ‘blowing up’ while taking it.

Then my friend told me : “So you really believe that the person who will successfully pass the test will be the right one for such positions ?”. Me “yes…if the whole assessment program is well designed …”. Him : “According to what I know, I seems to be the best way to assess competencies that are not enough and will cause inaction whereas organizations need to reinvent themselves”.

He was right.

What’s the ROI of social media for an employer brand ?

May 31, 2010 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

Last week I was invited by Weavlink to facilitate a series of workshops on the ROI of social media for employer brands. Attendees were mainly HR people with uneven maturity levels but who were deeply investigating the area. Of course it was not possible to do deep inside the issue in half an hoyr but here’s how I structured my presentation to make them think about their own model.

1°) Introduction

• It’s a concept that’s hard to get with our traditional thinking models. Do you know the “streetlight” story ? A guy is walking around a streetlight in the middle of the night. A passer-by comes and ask him what he’s looking for. “My keys”. “Wait…I’m gonna help you”. After a few minutes of unsuccessful search, he asks : “Are you sure you lost them here ?”. “Not at all but this is the only place where’s there’s enough light to search”. We need to learn to search beyond the streetlight !

• There’s no mathematical model because such systematic models don’t work for activities that are not systematic, that are about working on knowledge and information, where everything is exception and unique. We can’t equate people and interactions.

2°) What’s your goal ?

• Being on twitter, Facebook or wherever is not a goal. It it was, companies would find themselves idle in spaces where they would not know what to do because no one would know the goal that’s strived toward. They would be tossed, react insread of act and put themselves in danger. So, what matters before all is to know why they move into these media.

• Quick reminder on Norton and Kaplan’s strategy maps. Working on intangible only creates a potential that has to be used into formal activities to reach tangible goals.

• All successful social media initiatives (internal or external) share a common point : they aim at improving the delivery of a process or activity, in this case it could be recruiting, building a corporate image etc…

• Social media don’t change the nature or goals of an HR department but are one more tool they can use to fullfil their goals. Hence the need for segmentation : social tools (and each of them taken alone) has a varying importance depending on the targeted population (you won’t recruit you CEO on Facebook or a Yer with an ad in the NYT)

• That’s not because no mathematical formula exists that what is done can’t be measured as well as the impact on the efficiency of a given processus.

• 3 challenges for the employer brand : sourcing, image, engagement.

• Then, what matters is not to wonder what are the impact of social media toward these challenges but how to use and include them in strategies that aims at addressing these challenges.

• If any improvement can me measured in the way any action plan is executed in termes of speed, quality, scalability or cost, then we have answers to the ROI question.

Will you know how to export your conversations and focus on transactions ?

December 7, 2009 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

The world of communication and marketing is worried because of the consecration of digital medias, an highbrow word used to talk about the web by people who are suddently feeling out of date.

For many people, the revolution brought by the web is the so-called new “power” that’s in internauts’ hands. According to me this power, that has to be relativized because old rules still apply and only 1% internauts really use this power, is only one side of a global shift of the point of contact between a business and its environment.

People didn’t wait for web 2.0 or social media to talk about companies and products in their back. Over a cup of coffee, in real life, first, then on forums and, after, on social medias. It changes many things and made them more complicated for businesses is that discussions are scattered all around the web what makes it hard to take an inventory of them and follow them. This scattering is not a bad thing when one know of to take the most of it but causes headaches to people who consider corporate communication as a centralized thing.

Scattering can be an opportinity. The (few) companies that “buzzed” wisely are a good example. Those who crowdsource too even if they could do much better. As a matter of fact, what’s sure is that internauts don’t want to be pulled toward a corporate site anymore. On the other hands they are opened to the messages and to discussions provided the subject is relevant and the discussion takes place on their own ground. Now the only way to adress the audience is to do it on Facebook, Linkedin or any social network of this kind (even blogs but it needs some targetting), most of all if rather than delivering a message the purpose is to start a discussion to get opinions, advices, to ask for participation.

When a business decides to follow the internaut on his ground, there is something to be aware of and an answer to find. Be aware that no one can prevent a discussion from happening and an issue to be discussed. The question is to know how, among all these discussions, some of them will be about something the enterprise wants to be discussed, even questions it would like the audience to answer.

Personal branding is not about self promotion but collective intelligence

September 17, 2009 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

It’s incredible to see how the subject became fashionable in a few months (anyway in France) and how many experts suddenly emerged on the subjec. As Vincent Berthelot [fr] I was rather taken aback about what it was all about but, at the end, I came to a quick conclusion:

- if everyone is transparent and shows what he/she really is, it can be a good thing.

- in the same way, personal branding must come with an ongoing improvement approach : “how to improve in order to be what I want to show”. By the way, it’s the same for any corporate/product branding logic.

- if we want the system to work, everyone has to respect the rules, what means admit than X or Y is better than me and should receive more attention than me. I don’t think it’s possible, for the only reason that human are human and the human nature is what it is…most of all when a job or a contract are at stake.

- hence the unavoidable drift toward a classical self-marketing approach, driven by the bottom but that “honnest” people will have to follow not be had by less competent but more crafty people.

- and, as a conclusion, as said in this famous slideshow, “If your product sucks, social media won’t fix it”. It also applies to people.

That’s how I sup up my neophytic thoughts on the subject. But, thanks to a long talk with Olivier Zara [fr] a few month ago I understand there’s a huge potential here, provided people can make the difference between gimmick practices that will discredit the concept and the “good practices” that will be collectively beneficial. I’m not only talking about the general public web but also about things that may take place within organizations.

In fact, it’s, one more time, a matter of switching from a push logic to a pull one.

Recruitment process socialization

August 13, 2009 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

New concrete example of socialization : the recruitment process. Here again, we’ll see that it’s possible to do things without Copernican Revolution or harming anyone.

The situation

Enterprises have to hire people. Even if the market is sometimes hard for applicants, no company can work without people. The need is clear : hiring people who fit both the job description and the corporate culture, in the shorter time. If all these conditions are met, there is a kind of economic optimum : the right person according to the job means he/she will help value creation, compliance with culture means that he/she won’t leave after a few months (what implies a lot of extra costs), and as soon as possible means that internal costs will be as low as possible.

A structured approach that’s not infallible

From the job definition to the hiring, there’s no place for luck. A good recruitment is a challenge that’s important enough not to be treated in an offhand manner. Large businesses have a clear methodology to source and select applicants. Impossible to bypass it. This is logical since many of them have quality certified process, what means “we write what we do and we do what we write”. More, if everyone does things his own way, things may be confused if not unmanageable at the enterprise scale.

But sometimes it’s not egnough. Said in other words, the official method may fail to deliver the expected results. This may happen for many reasons. For instance : need to hire someone in emergency (sourcing is too slow), need for a specific or new kind of profile (not necessarily a big name, but there is an increasing need for new profiles that HR dept are not comfortable with yet, can’t source and qualify as well as traditional profiles), lack of applicants…. Of course it’s only about a few part of the offers. But there there those on which a lot of time is lost, or those for which a very special profile is needed. Quantitatively low, qualitatively high.

So, recruiters face the following challenge : trying to find the gem within the time limite, without puting the process at risk. So the purpose is not to beat about the bush but, on the contrary, to stick to the existing process and increase its bandwith.

Personal Branding won’t go without Corporate Branding

May 4, 2009 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

Personal Branding is a very fashionable topic today. More than that, it’s a deep trend that is overdiscussed because of its yougness. A day will come that it will be so obvious that no-one will feel like arguing anymore. The purpose is to manage one’s reputation and professional brand in order to :

- those who are looking for informations about someone find what’s needed to assess his skills, his ability to do hold a defined job.

- this person appears as the “right person” when recruiters are looking for a defined profile without having any name in mind.

This may also help freelances to find missions but let’s admit it’s more about an applicant to recruiter relationship.

Being one of those who think that a good recruitement is more about bringing together people and companies who really fit the one with the other instead of making a selection, I think that the other side of the relation has to be improved too : the one that helps applicants to have a better undertanding of the company. Recruitment is like waltz or rock n’roll : you’ll never dance very long if you don’t get the right partner.

The current crisis that makes so many people look for any kind of job musn’t make us forget major issues that will happen in the future.

Is digital identity only for experienced people ?

April 23, 2009 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

A few weeks ago I attended an event called YouOnTheWeb which purpose was to make people aware of digital identity, e-reputation and personal branding. A competiton was organized to reward students who are managing well their personal brand what means, on an employer’s side, that their abiliy to be relevant on a specific topic can be felt through their web presence.

Partner companies submitted subjects, in order the jury could assess students according to real employer issues. I was member of a jury in charge of assessing student’s relevance to cross-generation knowledge transfer and community management issues.

Before going further, I have repeat the context and the assumptions : we were suppose to face the first “representatives” of an hyper-connected generation, which shares everything online and naturally interacts a lot within networks.

Now let’s see the result.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Management & HR, Web & Usages Tagged With: e-reputation, personal branding, recruitment, reputation

Survey on the use of IT in french companies

February 20, 2009 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

Two weeks ago I was invited by Microsoft to attend the presentation of a survey on the use of IT in fench companies. Two things made it really interesting

• Although the fact new generations were transforming the use of IT, there was no global study to quantify and qualify it.

• The methodology was neutral and exhaustive : they started with general considerations and focused step by step to get to business cases. So the survey provides sociological elements, that were qualified, assessed, turned into busines practices etc… Each step was managed by a specialized partner (Eranos, Added Value, Ifop andt BearingPoint ).

Let’s see what’s in.

With recruitement tests 1.0 you get (outdated) managers 1.0

Personal branding is not about self promotion but collective intelligence

Personal Branding won’t go without Corporate Branding

Is digital identity only for experienced people ?

Subscribe to this bog

Tag cloud

Happy to work at…

Favorite books

Copyright