The quick and the slow of the multifaceted brand

Posted: 11th May 2012 by Kevin W. Grossman in Business-to-Business (B2B), Economics, Employment Brand, Marketing Communications, Recruiting, Talent Acquisition, Workplace Culture
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“Attract quickly, hire slowly.”

That sentiment comes from Dave McClure, venture capitalist and founding partner at 500 Startups, an Internet start-up seed fund and incubator program in Mountain View, Calif. He was part of a panel discussion on recruiting at the War for Talent event this week, in San Francisco.

For me, that phrase epitomizes how company brands are built and maintained, and how reciprocal the ebb and flow of concept to founding team to scaling a company truly are. What’s interesting is that most new jobs are created by start-ups, but most of the employed work for larger companies. So if a startup makes it and grows, they become a multifaceted brand. Facebook is just one exciting example: They’re about to go public, but just look at LinkedIn, as well as many others.

At whatever point in the growth stage of a company, each person added to the team, whether full-time, part-time or contract, incrementally changes the persona of the company, the internal and external brands, which are what make the company a multifaceted brand. The goal is to encourage hopefully happy folks’ individual brands to shine through and share the larger brand love — which in turn drives further visibility and growth.

Hence, we have McClure’s “attract quickly, hire slowly” formula. Even if we applied that maxim primarily to start-ups, I’d argue that successful larger companies apply it, as well. Whether you believe hiring for cultural fit is a reality or not — and I bet many of you believe it is — the great diverse yet loosely unified collective is what makes the brand shine inside and out.

And a really big marketing and ad budget, too — at least to shine outward, because management, marketing and recruiting still own the “expression” of the unified external brand. The figurative “half-life” of that depends on how unified the internal brand is. It is important to note, however, that more than ever — before that internal brand solidifies — many on the company team are loyal to the work, not necessarily the brand. Keeping your teams excited about the work helps productivity go up; revenue increases, and the brand equity increases, too.

And then you can have a bigger marketing and ad budget, as well as the organic brand equity, to attract new customers (employees and buyers) quickly, create more exciting work quickly, and let the brand simmer to a slow boil.

(Cross-posted on TalentCulture and inspired by #TChat)

The future of workplace flexibility is the woman (I bet)

Posted: 8th May 2012 by Kevin W. Grossman in Career Management, Economics, Human Resources, Leadership, Recruiting, Talent Acquisition, Workplace Culture
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Women shadows

To recruit and retain women. A measly one percent. That’s it.

When 1,226 employers were asked what their primary reasons were for developing workplace flexibility, caregiving leaves and dependent care initiatives, recruiting and retaining women was last on the list. Dead last.

Granted, retaining employees in general came in at 37 percent, followed by helping employees manage work and family life better at 16 percent, and third was improving morale at 12 percent (neck and neck with “mandated by law” at 12 percent, of course).

This being all part of the 2012 National Study of Employers, designed and conducted by the Families and Work Institute (FWI) and released jointly by FWI and the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). I had the opportunity to attend a press briefing about their latest invaluable study at last week’s SHRM Talent Management and Staffing Conference in Washington, D.C.

The new FWI and SHRM study, which was first conducted in 1998, shows significant changes for U.S. Workers since end of recession. According to the FWI and SHRM, the National Study of Employers is the most comprehensive and far-reaching study of practices, policies, programs and benefits provided by U.S. employers to address changing flexibility needs of today’s workforce.

The study targeted employers with 50 or more employees, 75 percent that are for-profit and 25 percent that are non-profit. They had a huge response rate of 44 percent. The good news is that “flexibility” remains on a steady track to the new normal since 2009, including changing start and quitting times for work, but opportunities to take extended leaves from work have declined.

You can read other highlights from the study from the press release or directly from the study itself available for download.

But I want to get back to the one percent from above, because I have two little girls who are almost two and four, who just may grow up to be captains of industry someday. Recently I wrote about women working in technology and how low the numbers were, even today. According to a recent study by the Anita Borg Institute, an organization dedicated to increasing the role of women in technology, there needs to be a culture shift inside companies today. They need to recruit from bigger candidate pools and advertise positions more neutrally, removing stereotypes and culture references that tell “diverse” candidates to stay away. When hiring, make sure that at least one woman is in the running for every tech job as well as being a part of the recruiting and hiring management teams.

As well as part of the team who’s developing workplace flexibility.

Also, let’s not forget that women dominate today’s colleges and professional schools (for every two men who will receive a B.A. this year, three women will do the same). More and more women are entering (and reentering) the workforce in record numbers since post WWII, and retaining more jobs than men in this never-ending economic ice age we’re in (I don’t care how hot markets are like Silicon Valley).

And when you see enlightening events like the 2012 Technovation Challenge where 11 teams of high school girls unveiled their mobile apps that were totally new-school, stunningly savvy and digitized to the max, it gives me hope that employers will continue to provide and increase flexibility for women (and men) alike when it comes to workplace flexibility, caregiving leaves and dependent care initiatives.

I read another article recently titled Why The World Needs A More Feminine Version Of Success and this relevant quote really stood out to me:

“The female ‘counter’ need is community and collaboration [to the status quo of business today], driven by a desire to protect vulnerable children who are only safe when the entire community is caring for them. A shift to a more balanced design basis that embodies feminine principles would mean moving from dominance to harmony, from exclusivity to inclusivity, and from individual success to community success.”

Right on. Women will continue to give birth and start families. Gay men and women will increase their adoption of children and/or have surrogate children and start families (straight couples too, I know). Unfortunately, fathers are still getting the short end of the stick when it comes to childcare and paternity care according to this year’s National Study of Employers. Even if they get time, they may not get paid. The world of work still assumes the women will take care of the children and the men will take care of business. Crazy, I know.

I’ll bet you though that by the time my daughters enter the workforce, there will be many more female captains of industry, and then it will be interesting to see what the National Study of Employers reveals about workplace flexibility.

The most productive and profitable get us across

Posted: 6th May 2012 by Kevin W. Grossman in Business-to-Business (B2B), Economics, HR Technology, Human Resources, Product Development, Recruiting, Talent Acquisition
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Beachedboat

It’s like crossing a fast-moving river in a boat without a motor or a paddle, while you slowly sink. At least that’s what it feels like when you have yet another anemic month of job growth — only 115,000 jobs in April (which may get revised upward like other months, but still). But economists keep telling us our heads will remain above water and bob away for now, even though more folks are dropping out of the job market all together.

Last week when I attended some of the SHRM Talent Management and Staffing Conference (which I’ll write about this week), and then attended and participated in all of the HRO Today Forum, and every time I caught a glimpse of the Potomac outside of the Gaylord Conference Center, I imagined millions still bobbing away.

For now.

Two things galvanized me at the HRO Today Forum, though — first was the first opening keynote panel, Where do Jobs Come From: The Birds & Bees of Labor Flows & Job Creation. The brilliant panel included:

  • Brink Lindsey, Senior Scholar in Research and Policy from The Kauffman Foundation
  • Scott Case, CEO of Startup America Partnership
  • John Haltiwanger, Professor of Economics at the University of Maryland

The panel was moderated by Sharon Taylor, Senior Vice President, Corporate Human Resources at Prudential. The discussion centered around the question of where do jobs come from?

I know, right? Where do they come from? Here are two facts:

  1. Most firms are small.
  2. Most workers work at large firms.

According the panel, young businesses (startups) contributed to more job creation than other businesses from 2003 to 2007. When you compare the private sector job growth to startup job growth, the private sector created 2.5 million net new jobs, while startups created over 3 million.

Another fact (of irony): young businesses create the longer-lasting sets of new jobs, but most young businesses fail.

But here’s the rub: today’s startups aren’t creating the same level of new job growth than in the past; there’s a downward trend. That’s not good news at all (and I’m seeing more downcast heads bobbing away in the water), because without startups, there wouldn’t be any net job creation. The downward trend is quite worrisome, especially since only 78% of college grads are working, but 46% of high school dropouts are not. We’ve got a lot of work to do; there’s too many people in the water.

Job growth happens where people live and migrate to, and thankfully based on what I’ve seen and read recently, there’s hope in that category across the board, the nation, the world — startups abound. Scott Case from Startup America concurs. Listening to him at the end of the panel session refreshed and revitalized the audience, and brought some chuckles as well when he said:

“It’s people making this sh$t happen.” And the average age of a startup founder is 40, not 22. These are learned folk ready to rock, of both genders, and the winners of the iTalent Competition whole-heartedly agree as you’ll see below.

The second thing that galvanized was just that — the iTalent Competition at the HRO Today Forum in cooperation with the Startup America Partnership and sponsored by Oracle. Five very diverse and exciting startups (the people making this sh$t happen), selected from nearly 30 entries, each giving a 10-minute pitch to a judging panel of HR and recruiting practitoners, analysts and technology investors. I helped organize and moderated this session, which was very exciting considering what each startup was up to.

The startups included:

ITalent

I’m not going to review or promote any of these firms in this article, since I’m now working with one of them and may work with others, but I will say I wish them all the best of luck, especially the winner.

And after all the judges’ ratings were tabulated for each presentation, the resounding winner was The Good Jobs, co-founded by two amazing women, Anne Grace Nimke and Betsy Rowbottom, both very passionate about what they’re doing.

For that matter, all of the founders from each startup are passionate about what they’re doing, and that passion get will hopefully get translated into productive and profitable firms. Not all of them will make it, but again, this is where there jobs are going to come from — from those who do.

In fact, the most productive and profitable firms are the fastest growing businesses and where the long tail of jobs come from. They’re the ones who will get us across the river, sinking boats intact and beached safely.

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