Central Perk

luni, 14 octombrie 2013

Inbound Recruiting: The Tactics You Already Know Make Hiring Easier and More Fun

Posted: 13 Oct 2013 04:21 PM PDT

[Hi, I'm Rob Ousbey, the COO at Distilledâ€"I haven't blogged here for a long time. Much of my time is spent on internal issues such as hiring, so I wanted to share some ideas about how to apply techniques that you're already familiar with to the difficult process of recruitment.]

A client asked me recently about Distilled's "inbound recruiting" process. I thought this was a fantastic term that described a large part of our approach, even though it's never consciously been part of our strategy.

Recruiting is universally hard, time consuming, and expensive. Distilled is super-picky about finding and hiring team members who match our core people attributes, and since we rarely write about the process publicly I'd like to share some of the the tactics that we use. I'll be specific in my suggestions; all of this practical advice can be applied to many other organisations.

In many ways, recruiting exceptional people follows a very similar path to finding potential customers, appealing to them and leading them to a conversion, so the inbound techniques that work in other situations are often extremely relevant to recruitment as well.

Though Moz readers need no reminding, feel free to spend a moment looking at Rand's list of tactics that he includes under the "inbound" banner.

To begin with, it's worth mentioned that Distilled does actually use paid advertising for our job ads.

However, when we use an advert on a site like LinkedIn, Gumtree, Guardian Jobs, Inbound.org, etc. to announce that we're looking to fill a particular role, many of the readers are often already very familiar with us and keen to work with us. So, while an advert is a highly visible statement of intent, it's much more powerful after we've already put in the legwork to generate interest in us as a company. That legwork begins with awareness.

Awareness and brand building

A large part of an inbound strategy is building awareness for your brand or organization, and about the opportunities you provide. Through activities like blogging on our site, our content, our meetups, our conferences, and maintaining a social following, we've been able to build a community of followers that may one day be interested in working for us.

To cast an even wider net: The audience members may know other people who are a perfect fit for us, and having a fan of our company pitch a position to their friends can be fantastically effective. This is one reason why I'm happy we publish content that isn't just about trying to drive potential clients.

A fair amount of our blog posts also demonstrate why Distilled might be a good place to work. The attributes that you talk about and the attributes that you look for in people will vary between companies, roles, and industries, but it can't hurt to make sure that you allow people to see behind the veil from time to time. An authentic message will go a long way here, in terms of helping your name stick in people's minds.

In Distilled's case, we believe that the opportunity to solve hard problems, to work on innovative proposals, travel the world and to have fun will appeal to the right people, so we make sure to talk about those on our blog.

Finally: Building up a social following also has value for when a role becomes available; we share every new job on our Twitter feed, which immediately puts it in front of a highly relevant audience. (For free! Inbound!)

Awareness in other niches

The tactics above become less appropriate when you are looking for employees who would never have been a fan or follower of you. For example: Distilled's audience members are predominantly online marketers, so this doesn't help us to hire a bookkeeper, a project manager, etc.

Similarly, for a small company with less time to dedicate to lots of content production, the tactics I listed might be less effective.

Fortunately there are plenty of other inbound techniques to help you here, and I have three in particular that have been effective.

Publishing offsite content: This seems almost trivially simple! Propose a guest contribution to a site relevant to the niche you're targeting. For example: if you're looking to hire online marketers, publishing on YouMoz will help to put you in front of some very relevant people.
Using the social networks of others: In the early days of Distilled US, as we were getting off the ground in Seattle and New York, Rand would tweet our job announcements and send tons of well qualified candidates. That's fantastic when we're looking for online marketers, but next time we hire for sales people or finance experts, I'll be asking influential friends in those circles to share the news.
Put yourself in front of them: Speaking at the right events/conferences can make you extremely visible, but even just attending the right meetups can be incredibly effective. In addition: many meetup groups are looking for sponsorship. Write to the organizer of a relevant group to see what you could offer; buying a few rounds of drinks, or providing a space for them to meet will allow you to network with all the promising talent, and a chance to say a few words to everyone about who you are, why you're supporting their meetup, and why you're hiring.

Serendipity

Sometimes you just can't anticipate the moments when you will generate awareness that leads to an application or a great hire.

Distilled's classy 404 page had minor success on Reddit a few years ago. One person who visited was Rob Toledo, who subsequently clicked around the rest of the site, thought we sounded cool, saw we were advertising for an Outreach role, and applied. Rob's now been with us two years, and has just been promoted to be the head of a ten-person teamâ€"all because he was bored online and someone had submitted our page to Reddit!

This was just something for an intern to work on; we never expected the page to help us hire multiple people.

Invest in landing pages

At the latest SearchLove conference, Rand discussed recruiting. He mentioned that organizations often under-invest in their jobs landing pagesâ€"and he couldn't be more correct! Given the importance and associated value of these pages, they should be treated like any other important commercial pages.

The relevant pages should appeal to the right types of person: Are you looking for very professional candidates? Those who are motivated by particular aspects of a job? For some great examples, there's a really good-looking recruitment page right here on Moz. I'm also a big fan of the simplicity of the Amicus jobs page.

So meta.

Building a fantastic page has many benefits, the critical one being that a better page (where it's easy for people to find the information they need, read & compare job details) will generate more responses.

Analytics and testing

I mentioned "conversions" earlier on, and by keeping most of the recruitment funnel on our website (the full job descriptions, the application forms, etc.); we are able to use many of the web analytics techniques that we're already used to. With Google Analytics installed on every page of the funnel, we can assess how people are finding us (though search, social, and referred traffic), and which channels deliver the best results. By defining specific conversions, there's also the opportunity to use CRO techniques to improve the number of people who read through a job ad, begin an application, submit a completed application, etc.

Real analytics data for our latest marketing internship advert in London. The bounce rates seem fairly high, but many of those were people clicking the 'Apply Now' button and thus leaving the site.

One (rather advanced) technique that I've not had the chance to try out just yet would be to add a unique identifier for each application as a GA Custom Variable. In addition to finding out where your job applicants are coming from, this would let you track them through to acceptance/rejection, and find out which sources are sending the best candidates.

In conclusion

Doing what you can to help your organization "become loved" is valuable in many ways, but it can have huge benefits when you find yourself looking for great people.

Although I've shared learnings from my own Distilled experiences, there are many other things I know we could be doing better in this area. Specifically, having an "always open" application process to avoid missing out on an inquiry from a great candidate, greater investment in our recruitment pages, and better data analysis of adverts and applicants through the funnel.

Finally: if you have any thoughts or questions about how to generate interest from potential candidates, please do drop a comment below.

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Seth's Blog : The opposite of 'defenseless'

The opposite of 'defenseless'

It might be defended, or defensive.

If you're asking for feedback or coaching or an education, neither is going to help you very much.

The person who has ideas that are well defended isn't going to be able to listen carefully for the lessons that can help him change those ideas.

And the person who is defensive not only won't hear the ideas, but he'll push away anyone generous enough to share them.

Defenseless is the best choice for those seeking to grow.

• Email to a friend •

duminică, 13 octombrie 2013

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Judging the Obamacare Rollout Two Weeks Later; Signups Vs. Obama's 7 Million Goal; Unprecedented Experiments

Posted: 13 Oct 2013 07:34 PM PDT

Tomorrow marks the two-week anniversary of the Obamacare rollout. Inquiring minds may be wondering how things are going. The short answer is exceptionally poorly.

Hawaii is not even up and running yet due to software glitches. On day 10, some sites reported that a mere 51,000 signups had occurred. Other places said it was double.

Either way, the number of signups is pathetic, and the White House has not released its own total, preferring to give counts of 14 million "lookie-loos" who visited the website without signing up for anything.

Signs of Trouble From the Start

Please consider the New York Times report From the Start, Signs of Trouble at Health Portal

In March, Henry Chao, the chief digital architect for the Obama administration's new online insurance marketplace, told industry executives that he was deeply worried about the Web site's debut. "Let's just make sure it's not a third-world experience," he told them.

Two weeks after the rollout, few would say his hopes were realized.

For the past 12 days, a system costing more than $400 million and billed as a one-stop click-and-go hub for citizens seeking health insurance has thwarted the efforts of millions to simply log in. The growing national outcry has deeply embarrassed the White House, which has refused to say how many people have enrolled through the federal exchange.

Even some supporters of the Affordable Care Act worry that the flaws in the system, if not quickly fixed, could threaten the fiscal health of the insurance initiative, which depends on throngs of customers to spread the risk and keep prices low.

"These are not glitches," said an insurance executive who has participated in many conference calls on the federal exchange. Like many people interviewed for this article, the executive spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying he did not wish to alienate the federal officials with whom he works. "The extent of the problems is pretty enormous. At the end of our calls, people say, 'It's awful, just awful.' "

One person familiar with the system's development said that the project was now roughly 70 percent of the way toward operating properly, but that predictions varied on when the remaining 30 percent would be done. "I've heard as little as two weeks or as much as a couple of months," that person said. Others warned that the fixes themselves were creating new problems, and said that the full extent of the problems might not be known because so many consumers had been stymied at the first step in the application process.

Just a trickle of the 14.6 million people who have visited the federal exchange so far have managed to enroll in insurance plans, according to executives of major insurance companies who receive enrollment files from the government. And some of those enrollments are marred by mistakes. Insurance executives said the government had sent some enrollment files to the wrong insurer, confusing companies that have similar names but are in different states. Other files were unusable because crucial information was missing, they said.

Many users of the federal exchange were stuck at square one. A New York Times researcher, for instance, managed to register at 6 a.m. on Oct. 1. But despite more than 40 attempts over the next 11 days, she was never able to log in. Her last attempts led her to a blank screen.

Signups Vs. Obama's 7 Million Goal

Obama is hoping for 7 million signups. How many does he have? The administration refuses to disclose the number, but 10 days into the program, leaked reports showed 51,000 applicants of which just over 1,000 were actually processed.

On October 11, Media Matters reported Fox Cherry-Picks Obamacare Data To Underestimate Enrollment By More Than Half.

It would help if the Obama released the actual numbers. While we are waiting, let's be generous and assume the numbers are triple or even quadruple initial estimates.

Would 200,000 be a success? Should Republicans simply have stepped back, waiting for this to implode?

Experts Warn of More Obamacare Glitches

Politico reports Tech Experts Wary of More Obamacare Glitches

The glitch-plagued Obamacare rollout might be just the beginning: A series of potential technology problems could thwart the Obama administration's goal of getting 7 million people enrolled in the new exchanges by the end of March.

Millions of people have already encountered error messages, delays, crashes and stuck accounts. Technology experts and Obamacare backers worry that each step ahead in the process — filling out applications, checking on subsidies and selecting a health insurance plan — creates a potential technology choke point. And that doesn't even count any additional chaos when people try to use their new health insurance come January.

"There is grave concern that many individuals who are intent on securing coverage by [Jan. 1] may not be able to do so by that date," said consultant Dan Schuyler, who helped design a health insurance exchange in Utah and is now the senior technology expert at Leavitt Partners. "There's a small window [the Department of Health and Human Services] has. If the problems persist another three or four weeks, those at the back of the line will not have coverage."

Some software engineers have suggested that the consumer end of the website, designed by one contractor, is not "talking to" the back end of the website, developed by a different company.

Diagnostic tools in Web browsers have identified coding issues that may be complicating account creation. The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that the administration is considering an overhaul of the registration system this weekend to allow people to browse health plan options without first creating an account. The paper said the tech experts are focused on a bottleneck where a flood of data meets an Oracle software component involved in identification verification.

There's particular worry about that tax credit calculation, which determines how much of the premium people have to pay.

"If we are already running into issues at the user account stage, we're going to run into a lot more issues when we get to the more complex operations at the [subsidy] eligibility determination," said Leavitt's Schuyler. "That's the reality. It's a very complex process, and I think it's going to get worse before it gets better."

HHS declined to comment on The Wall Street Journal report or to respond to POLITICO's specific questions about possible problems with subsidy determinations or the enrollment transfers to insurers, two of the areas that experts pointed to as of particular concern.

Part of the problem is that signing up for Obamacare coverage is far more complicated than the online transactions Americans are used to, like checking a bank balance or ordering a book. The Obamacare website must knit together platforms from five huge federal agencies — Homeland Security, the Social Security Administration, HHS, the Treasury Department and the Department of Justice — each of which marches to its own IT specifications. It must also interact with separate systems set up by the 15 states that built their own exchanges, plus all of those outside insurers.

It's an unprecedented experiment in federal information technology.

Fool's Mission

Requiring five distinct government agencies to integrate IT functions, on a tight time schedule, with something as complicated as Obamacare was a fool's mission from the beginning.

Unprecedented Experiment

But Obamacare is unprecedented in more ways than one. And the early prognosis looks as bad from a technological standpoint as it does from an economic standpoint.

Here's the key difference: Technology can be fixed eventually, but Obamacare itself can't.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

sâmbătă, 12 octombrie 2013

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

China's Exports "Surprisingly" Drop

Posted: 12 Oct 2013 03:20 PM PDT

Economists expected a 6% rise in Chinese exports. Instead, exports fell 0.3%. Please consider China's September export growth in surprise slide.

China's export growth fizzled in September to post a surprise fall as sales to Southeast Asia tumbled, data showed, a disappointing break to a recent run of indicators that had signaled its economy gaining strength.

China's exports dropped 0.3 percent in September from a year earlier, the Customs Administration said on Saturday, sharply confounding market expectations for a rise of 6 percent, and marking the worst performance in three months.

Imports fared better, rising 7.4 percent in September from a year ago, better than forecasts for a 7 percent increase, shrinking China's monthly trade surplus to $15.2 billion.

Analysts said weak exports underscored worries about flagging global demand, which may crumble further in coming months - especially in emerging markets - when tighter U.S. monetary policy pushes investors away from developing economies.

Indeed, the data showed Chinese exports to Southeast Asia, China's fastest-growing export market in the past year, dived to a 17-month low in September. Capital outflows from the region on bets that the U.S. central bank will cut its bond purchases had hit demand, said Louis Kuijs, an economist at RBS in Hong Kong.

"Looking ahead, export data may be quite weak in the coming months," Kuijs said, adding that financial turmoil in several emerging markets had dragged on global demand.

Hardly Surprising

For reasons discussed many times on this blog, the news is hardly surprising. Moreover, with exports down and imports up, China's GDP is going to "surprise" economists on the downside as well.

For the real story on Chinese growth and why it will not be as strong as most analysts expect, here is some additional reading.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Silliness From Boehner Rejected by Obama; Cut Losses, End the Madness

Posted: 12 Oct 2013 09:46 AM PDT

Bloomberg reports Boehner Said Obama Rejected Fiscal Offer.

House Speaker John Boehner told fellow Republicans today that President Barack Obama rejected his latest fiscal offer, said Representative Raul Labrador, an Idaho Republican.

"The president rejected our deal," Labrador told reporters after leaving Republicans' closed-door meeting in Washington.

House Republican leaders' plan would extend U.S. borrowing authority to Nov. 22 from Oct. 17 and would make some changes to Obama's health-care law, structured in a way that could meet the political needs of each side to claim success.

The Deal

Boehner wants to end a tax on medical devices
Extend the debt ceiling limit to November 22

Why bother? Does anyone think an agreement of substance can be hammered out by November 22.

Amusingly, Boehner's proposal increases the deficit by $32 billion.

So much for fiscal prudence.

I still expect six Senate Republicans to pass a clean measure and send it to the House where it would pass if Boehner allowed a vote.

Cut Losses, End the Madness

Republicans should just concede and allow a vote to end the shutdown without conditions, Representative Peter King, a New York Republican, said in an interview yesterday.

"We should cut our losses and get it over with," he said. "It's madness to keep the government closed any longer."

As I mentioned before, the risk to Boehner, is House members use a discharge petition to force a vote. There are close to 30 Republicans willing to extend the debt ceiling, and the measure only needs about 17 to pass.

As it stands, Republicans do not want to overrule Boehner via discharge petition to force the vote. If the Senate passes a clean bill, pressure on Boehner will be intense.

I strongly support a balanced budget, reduced spending, and other things Republicans want, but the battle is not going to be won this way.

In case you missed it, please consider Pragmatic Look at the Debt Ceiling Debate; Who Broke Washington?

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Congrats, your video's now on YouTube!

Way to go, Mihai T!
Your video's now on YouTube.

Receptie Cora


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Seth's Blog : Is Google jumping the shark?

Is Google jumping the shark?

Ron Howard explained that while they were shooting the notorious episode where Fonzie jumped the shark, he knew the show had turned a corner. In the case of Happy Days, the corner was the chasing of ratings at the cost of integrity. In the case of corporations, the corner is usually the chasing of profit at the expense of the original mission.

These places don't run out of creativity. You don't jump the shark because you're empty, you do it because there's pressure to be greedy.

Google has been found to have hacked and stolen user data, circumventing privacy settings. They've recently announced that without asking first or sharing the upside, they may be selling the names and faces of people who use Google + to advertisers, to be included in endorsement ads. People expressing themselves online might soon find themselves starring in ads as unpaid, unwilling endorsers.

How does this happen? Public companies almost inevitably seek to grow profits faster than expected, which means beyond the organic growth that comes from doing what made them great in the first place. In order to gain that profit, it's typical to hire people and reward them for measuring and increasing profits, even at the expense of what the company originally set out to do.

Every company at a certain stage ends up with two sorts of employees... some that work hard to improve the experience and value for the original customers, and some that tear down that experience and value in order to please shareholders in the short run.

It's not surprising, but it's sad.

The irony here is that in the long run, what the advertisers are telling companies like Google they want isn't what is going to build it into an even better company (or even help the advertisers) in the long run.

Advertisers often seem to want pitchmen spraying perfume at every person who walks into the store, inserts stuffed into every periodical, pop up ads, complete data on every individual they target and the ability to spam at will. Great media companies fight back on all of these intrusions, because they know that what actually works is genuine connection built around remarkable products and services.

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vineri, 11 octombrie 2013

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Dark Vision for Jobs: Jobless Future? Is It Different This Time?

Posted: 11 Oct 2013 11:50 AM PDT

Moments ago, I responded to a reader James from the UK regarding automation on farms. James commented that he only need one laborer where decades ago it took 25 men to do the same job.

James asked "If we displace 90% of the workforce in the next 100 years - and we could well exceed this, given rapidly increasing levels of automation (with humanoid robots becoming commonplace in this time-frame) - how will the aggregate consumer afford to consume the average product? The level of work loss seems likely to exceed the level of new product development."

My Reply to James

History suggests innovation will at some point create more jobs.

We have lost jobs on farms but we gained them on the assembly line. We lost jobs on the assembly line and gained them on the internet. We lost jobs on the internet and ....

And I don't know what's next.
I suspect something with energy but I do not know.

If nothing comes, I expect war.

Dark Vision For Jobs

Just as soon as I replied to James, I noticed another email on the same subject. Reader Andrew asked me to comment on the ComputerWorld article Gartner's Dark Vision for Tech, Jobs.

Science fiction writers have long told of great upheaval as machines replace people. Now, so is research firm Gartner. The difference is that Gartner, which provides technology advice to many of the world's largest companies, is putting in dates and recommending immediate courses of action.

The job impacts from innovation are arriving rapidly, according to Gartner. Unemployment, now at about 8%, will get worse. Occupy Wall Street-type protests will arrive as early as next year as machines increasingly replace middle-class workers in high cost, specialized jobs. In businesses, CIOs in particular, will face quandaries as they confront the social impact of their actions.

Machines have been replacing people since the agricultural revolution, so what's new here?

In previous technological leaps, workers could train for a better job and achieve an improvement in their standard of living. But the "Digital Industrial Revolution," as the analyst firm terms it, is attacking jobs at all levels, not just the lower rung. Smart machines, for example, can automate tasks to the point where they become self-learning systems.

Smart machines "are diagnosing cancer, they are prescribing cancer treatments," said Kenneth Brandt, a Gartner analyst. These machines "can even deliver [treatment] to the room of the patient."

Gartner sees all kinds of jobs being affected: Transportation systems, construction work, mining warehousing, health care, to name a few. With IT costs at 4% of sales for all industries, there's very little left to cut in IT, but there is a great opportunity to cut labor.

The companies on the leading edge of this trend include Amazon, which spent $775 million last year to acquire Kiva Systems, a company that makes robots used in warehouses. Google is also on the forefront, with its effort to develop driverless cars. Gartner applies a broader template, and says that the jobs most susceptible to machine replacement involve a range of back-office functions, including transactions, specialization, objectivity, high control, high scale, compliance and science.

This shift will affect employment, said Brandt, at Gartner's Symposium ITxpo. "We believe there will be persistent and higher unemployment."

Is It Different This Time?

Is it different this time? Is Gartner right? Or is innovation-history right?

I have commented numerous times, as early as 2009, if not before, to expect "structurally high unemployment for a decade".

Nonetheless, I have been generally optimistic over longer periods of time. History suggests some innovation will create jobs.

Is innovation-history right? Even if so, will jobs arrive in time? If not, war-history suggests a far darker view.

Are the optimists or the pessimists correct?

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Canadian Reader Comments on Outsourcing, Automation and Ten "Real" Problems With the US Economy

Posted: 11 Oct 2013 10:28 AM PDT

In Ten "Real" Problems With the US Economy I took a look at complaints by Paul Craig Roberts that outsourcing was the "real" problem behind the crisis.

I dismissed Roberts' claim, while listing ten real problems, only one of which (warmongering) noted by Roberts.

Ten Real Problems

Fractional Reserve Lending
The Fed
Lack of a gold standard
Deficit Spending
Public unions
Davis Bacon and prevailing wage laws drive up costs
Disability fraud
Warmongering
Politicians get into bed with corporations, unions, and crony constituents
Lack of incentives to hold down costs on medicare, food stamps, and entitlements

I stated "If you fix the first four or five, most of the rest of the problems will be fixed automatically."

Comments From a Canadian Reader

Reader Martin, from Canada, thought I should have emphasized one of the points I made about outsourcing. Martin writes ...

Hi Mish,

I am a bit addicted to your Blog, and love your different points of view, so thank you.

Sometimes you make some small points/comments that actually need to be in bold, I found this comment by you particularly interesting:

"As for the loss of manufacturing jobs, I would point out that even China is losing them - to automation."

You are very right! A very close friend of mine designs systems and programs automation (robotics) for a large electronic manufacturer headquartered here in Toronto, Canada. I told him that he chose a great line of work based on what I have read on your Blog. They also have manufacturing and contracts with companies in China. Recently on one of his trips to China he visited one of these plants and found it was totally automated (they build components for solar panels, which are then sent to Canada to be "built-in Canada", which is another story altogether). He was amazed that in China of all places with all of their "cheap labour" they would automate an entire plant! While going over the design and systems he worked closely with the owners, they told him that true labour costs were growing exponentially and they wanted to get a head of the curve. Well turns out more and more of these plant owners are going this way, a true sign of the future.
It's also very neat to see that these entrepreneurial Chinese are using contracts with big western companies to gain access to experienced manufacturing process and talent, pretty smart if you ask me.

Cheers,
Martin

Thanks Martin. Outsourcing is a scapegoat for the real problems I mentioned.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

luni, 14 octombrie 2013

Inbound Recruiting: The Tactics You Already Know Make Hiring Easier and More Fun