Here’s some knowledge for your morning, from C.K. Prahalad and M.S. Krishnan, and to be featured in a webcast this afternoon.  In their new book, The New Age of Innovation:  Driving Co-Created Value Through Global Networks, the authors build upon a thesis expressed as N=1, R=G.  What does this mean?  From the book:

1.  Value is based on unique, personalized experiences of consumers.  Firms have to learn to focus on one consumer and her experience at a time, even if they serve 100 million consumers.  (N=1)

2.  No firm is big enough in scope and size to satisfy the experiences of one consumer at a time.  All firms will access resources from a wide variety of other big and small firms- a global ecosystem. (R=G)

So what exactly are the implications for talent management professionals then?  From Dr. Krishnan:

New levels of transparency to skills, talent and performance

Decoding the dominant logic and enabling change

Integration of HR with Operations & Strategy

Talent analytics for contextual insights

New policies and evidence based corrections

I’m going to hold off on my own comments until after the webcast- and ask for yours as well!

“There has been a philosophical shift in the nature of recruiting.  [The Candidate] Lifecycle is not a finite process with a beginning, middle and end: it is a relationship – an ongoing communication.  To build a pipeline of candidates that we can draw on whenever we have a need, we must build a community.  It’s a marriage – not a one-night stand!”  Angela Gardner, Vice President of Talent Acquisition, Fox Entertainment Group, Inc.

Angela shared, during today’s webcast, some great advice from her background as a headhunter and from her tenure at Fox on mastering the candidate lifecycle.  We had some terrific questions asked as well- we’d love to hear from you on solutions!

What steps can we take to get our regional communities involved in our organization’s talent brand?

Where are the best areas to spend our recruiting budgets?  Brand? Systems? Labor?

How can an organization balance agile recruiting with compliant recruiting?

Social Recruiting Practices From Best Buy  Cheezhead

50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business… and Recruiting?  Chris Brogan

More social recruiting ideas  CollegeRecruiter

How deep is your organization’s talent pipeline?  How many years will it serve?  If you are one of many industries in the world facing looming talent shortages, these questions are of critical importance.  And let’s face it, those talent needs are not going to be satisfied simply be playing the recruitment version of musical chairs.  Is it your turn to hire that one local professional that every competitor in town has employed for 2 years?

In our live webcast today, Robin Miller, Director of Staffing at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, and Susan Milliken, Executive Director of Futures for Kids (F4K) talked about BCBSNC’s talent pipeline programs and how to bridge the gap between employers, students and careers.  At BCBSNC, their strategy targets both entry-level talent and professional talent.  Their entry-level needs are served by high school partnerships, including established ventures with:

• National Academy Foundation Programs
• Business Advisory Boards
• Career Fairs and Mock Interviews
• Futures for Kids:  I have had the pleasure of working with F4K starting in a past life.  In a nutshell, F4K “bridges the gap between the hopes and dreams of our students and the workforce development needs of our communities.”  Through targeted programs at middle- and high-schools, F4K
• Uses the Internet to help students discover what makes them tick
• Allows kids to explore careers that match their unique talents
• Gives every student a career coach to talk to
• Empowers educators with information about their kids’ career goals
• Enables businesses to grow their future workforce locally
• Shows our kids careers that can make them happy

Additionally, their professional talent pipeline is filled through:

• College Internship Program- think of this as a “broad-stroke” solution designed to give rising seniors from participants universities experience in multiple facets of careers at BCBSNC
• Apprenticeship Program-  is truly a part-time experience while enrolled in university
• Direct College Hire Program- a training program that includes leadership and technical courses

I am really impressed by how thoughtful and successful BCBSNC has been in designing and implementing these programs.  Want more info about partnering with F4K in North Carolina, Canada or pilots in the world beyond?  Check them out online.

Today’s webcast will focus on work/life initiatives and how to measure the impact of these programs.  What does work/life have to do with talent acquisition?  We’ll discuss that in a bit.  First- let’s define what “work/life” is.  According to our presenter, Dr. Amy Richman of WFD Consulting, “[w]ork-life is a perspective. Companies that take a work-life perspective regard employees from a whole person point of view. They acknowledge that it is not just skills, abilities, and career goals but also work environment and personal and family life that give employees the energy and commitment to contribute fully. “

Creating, fostering, and nurturing a healthy work/life strategy is a competitive edge in talent acquisition- especially amongst semi-retiring Boomers and smart young Millennials.

Dr. Richman encourages organizations to ask this question: Does your company’s work-life effort have these components?

•Dependent care programs & policies

•Health and wellness programs & policies

•Education benefits and programs

•Financial and legal programs

•Flexible work practices

•Organizational culture that enables employees to work efficiently and manage work and personal responsibilities

•Workload and work redesign efforts to eliminate low value work and achieve business results

•Community focus and collaboration to leverage investments

Are there any  missing components?  Do you disagree with any?

Finally, Dr. Richman demonstrates how to measure the impact of work/life programs, and share some metrics from a case study at IBM.  And those metrics are pretty darn powerful- through the lens of an employee survey, IBM found that over 40% of their employees ranked work/life balance as the 1st or 2nd reason for continuing to work for the company.

If your aim is to be a master of social utilities, you should strive to mimic Accenture.  If your goal is to be an expert in campus marketing and talent acquisition, you have no better model than Carrie Dacey, where she leads the US Recruitment Marketing team.

Accenture has implemented some really courageous and innovative social networking methods.  And here’s a hint:  it isn’t all just about LinkedIn.  (No offense to LinkedIn, of course.)

• Video Blogs from real employees about real work.  Nothing says “realistic job preview” from hearing it directly from the source.  Our newest generation is not amused or tricked by actors reading scripts or corporate schills.
• Reading more your style?  Then surf on over to the at least one dozen different active blogs, again from real employees about their actual work and what it’s like to do it.
• Accenture has a virtual presence in Second Life.  Now, I never managed to even get out of the tutorial in SL, but that doesn’t mean others don’t play there.  (Apparently the top online user has spent a total of 726 hours online in SecondLife.  That’s over 30 NON-STOP days.  Or over 90 working days.)  Talk about a captive audience.  Enough has been said about the trials and tribulations of recruitment marketing by minds far more powerful than mine, so I won’t digress too much further.  But I must raise this final point:  if you aren’t there, who is?
• Yup, Accenture has a corporate Facebook page, too.  Actually, it has more than one.

Get the point yet?  These sites- and I am guessing their strategy- is about much more than “Apply Here for Job Now”.  Sure, that’s one of the overall aims, but it isn’t the end-all be-all.

Their social networking strategy also isn’t an endgame- rather, they already have a terrific talent mindset and want others that share in that vision, and this is how they figured out to find them.  Oh, and by the way, those blogs aren’t edited. 

In a previous post, I offered the opinion that passionate recruiters are crucial to a successful company. Dan Black is one of these rockstars. I spent the beginning of June this year traveling coast to coast for an HCI Innovation Tour on campus recruiting, and Dan was part of our panel in NYC. It was superb event, and I’ll share more about it in posts to come.

Dan is the Director of Campus Recruiting at Ernst & Young, and like many great recruiters, he didn’t set out from college with a career in talent acquisition in mind. In fact, he’s an accountant! But now he leads the college recruiting efforts for a global organization and is a shining example of a corporation that “gets it right.” I’ll use their gigantic Facebook profile to demonstrate how this is true.

Aside from the obvious typical recruitment pitches you’ll see here, (read: brand, logo, career website link, recruiting collateral) the surfer will also find an extensive network of alums, interns, and interested candidates, a mechanism to share UNEDITED thoughts on EY, great resources on real career opportunities, and info about EY’s view on social responsibility, among others.

Anyone that says young people don’t want employers to be on FB- the proof is in the pudding. Check out how many fans they have. So, does your org have a Facebook profile?

According to Chris Resto, Ian Ybarra, and Ramit Sethi, authors of the definitive book on recruiting Millennials, Recruit or Die: How Any Business Can Beat The Big Guys In the War For Young Talent, the three essential facts to know about young talent are Career, Glamour and Gossip.

What does this mean?

Career: Millennials want options. Resto, et al., use Teach for America to illustrate this point. Working at Teach for America satisfies so many of the desires of young people. The work is philanthropic: its aim is nothing less than changing what they define as our nation’s greatest injustice- educational inequality. The corps is close-ended: it requires a 2 year commitment so applicants know they won’t get pigeon-holed. It is very competitive- in 2007 18000 individuals applied and less than 3000 were hired. Finally, Teach for America proudly declares what their employees do AFTER the job has ended in the form of graduate school and corporate partnerships, like the Top 10 law schools and Google, McKinsey and GE, and alum discussion portals.

Glamour: Remember, the generation we’re discussing has been marketed to since long before they were allowed to swim in the pool unsupervised. This is the generation for which the term “tween” was coined. If it isn’t rewarding, they ain’t comin’. But it isn’t just about the money. Sure, that’s great, but glamour encompasses a whole host of benes you can offer to make them feel special- the key is to make them feel MORE special than anyone else. That might include cool or critical work assignments, personal relationship opportunities with a big cheese, or perks like concert tickets and travel.

Gossip: If you know any young people, you know they are mixers and connectors- they love to talk and have about 10 different ways to do so. And they are totally into information. Remember, we’re talking about the generation raised on 24 hour-a-day news and instant internet updates. Everything an employer does, say the authors, GOOD or BAD, is amplified.

Presented by Meredith Morris, Senior Research Analyst at Monster Intelligence, and Liz Friedman, Group Marketing Manager at Microsoft.

For the first part of the webcast, Meredith presented data from MonsterTrak’s 2008 Annual Entry-Level Job Outlook Survey.  Key takeaways:

• That although the number of companies planning on hiring recent college grads is decreasing, organizations that are planning to hire new grads are going to hire more than last year.  Meredith said there are several factors that influence this- she mentioned lower salaries for entry-level employees, increased technology skills in younger workers, and quality of talent as some possible few.
• There is a disconnect between employers and college job seekers on what the purpose of the interview is.  Job Seekers think the interview is designed to allow employers to assess their experience, while companies say they are looking to evaluate the candidate’s behaviors.

I am thinking…

Is your organization strategically planning on hiring new grads this year?  Is the total number up or down from last year?

How should we systemically address this soft versus hard skills evaluation issue to set expectations appropriately?

The second part of the webcast was a case study from Microsoft on creating a candidate value proposition, and Liz shared some great information with us.  I was most impressed by the “pillars” of their CVP- People, Opportunity and Impact.  What a cross-generational appealing message.  She also shared some examples of how MSFT is getting the “word” out about why candidates would want to work there using some really cool niche sites:

• Improving the Candidate Experience
• Valuing Diversity at Microsoft
• Thinking outside of the box- campus-style

I am thrilled to be launching a new blog on talent acquisition- what a fantastic place to discourse on the good, great, and not-so-great practices, people, and ideas I have the privilege of hearing every day.  It is my role and pleasure to direct the content we present to you on the topic of finding and hiring talent, and I spend most of my days seeking out the very same.

I’d like to set the tone for each consecutive entry you’ll read here by offering an opinion on a consistent theme I see behind every organization that gets it right.  And I’m not talking just about hiring the best folks, I also mean offering the most to the world, reaping great returns and generally exceeding where others fail.  My proposal is this:  that greatness balances on the edge of one individual’s passion.  It all begins with one person’s devotion and enthusiasm, and can’t succeed without it.  So what am I saying?  That passionate recruiters- those loyally devoted to hiring the best and staking their claim on nothing less- are the first critical component to hiring terrific people.

Look around you- who are these rock stars of talent acquisition?  I encourage you to nominate them here- we need to showcase their passion.  Maybe it’s even you!