John Sumser, Principal Analyst, HRxAnalysts
Technology turns fluid relationships into transactions. That’s what they mean when they say ‘it reduces friction’. The whole point of technology is to remove the artistry and replace it with a procedure.
If you look around today’s organizations, you see the ghettos of productivity created by waves of technology. If you let the tech folks completely run the show, you’ll end up believing that everything can be added, subtracted, multiplied, divided, reported on, assessed, improved and so on. Squishing the soul (and all of its friction) out of the equation is how you get those dramatic productivity increases.
How do you measure joy? How do you automate it? Do you really think a questionnaire will help measure fun?
It’s easy to build an organization of rules embedded in software. While the rules ensure consistency, they are the enemy of innovation. This is the answer to the question “Where is the innovation in recruiting?”
It’s been driven out by technology.
As it stands, recruiting is usually a siloed activity kept extremely separate from the rest of the organization. It runs by its own arcane internal rules and measures and offers little interesting for the passerby. If employees are involved at all, they are used as resources, milked for their networks and embedded in a hiring process that is beyond their control.
Does this sound like a recipe for productive growth of the organization?
What if we used technology to include the rest of the organization in the process? (It’s one of the few areas where gamification might actually work.)
Here are the key areas to focus on to involve the application of technology in service of creating a livelier, more entertaining experience:
- Make Job Descriptions Fun
Have you ever read anything more boring and less likely to describe the actual job? What if every department was responsible for guaranteeing that the job description matched the job and described an organization that was a good place to work? Retention begins with this oft overlooked tool. Leader boards, participation badges and cash incentives would make a profound difference here. - Give Everyone a Gateway to Employment Branding
The best people to represent the company are the people who work there. Employment branding is a 24×7 operation that usually goes unmanaged. Create real opportunities for people to succeed by continuously including them in the right conversation and giving them regular small talk updates. Help them know what to talk about (of course this requires that you do, too). - Social Media
Social technology can expand the brand/employment brand exponentially. The way to make this happen is by lavishing praise on the successes and ignoring the failures. Every job should have a body of sample tweets, Facebook posts and blog outlines so that employees have a way of getting sanctioned traction. - Real Referrals
Pretty soon, we’ll all be getting over the idea that looking at an employee’s Facebook friends list has anything to do with recruiting. It’s the wrong direction for the process to flow. Employees can be content magnifiers who expand the reach of the company rather than network providers. Real referrals are driven by word of mouth programs. - Onboarding
This is an additional pivot piece in the retention process and ought to generally be considered a part of the recruiting process. If the team is measured against things like ‘time to productivity’ for new employees and shares tangible responsibility for getting the newbie to work as quickly as possible, onboarding can become a pleasurable team sport.
How would you shift the mindset of your recruiting function to include more crowd sourcing and team participation? Does technology have any role in this at all?
