WorkPuzzle

How are Other Small Businesses Using Social Media?

As Dave mentioned in his last post, we have made a concerted effort to focus on social media over the last month.  As you might suspect, much of what we write in WorkPuzzle is based on the questions and concerns that we have heard our clients express.  

But occasionally, we focus on topics that are probably of more interest to us than some of individuals who regularly read WorkPuzzle.  If you’re in that second group, thank you for indulging us for the last few weeks as we’ve explored social media topics.

Of course, this begs the question—if you’re not interested in social media topics, should you be more concerned about these issues?  More specifically, are you putting your business at risk by failing to understand and engage this new technology?

Until recently, the argument could be made that social media was primarily a personal issue.  Not using social media was similar to not knowing who the finalists were in this season’s American Idol.  People may have looked at you a little strange, but it didn’t hurt your business.

At the same time, the only businesses that were taking advantage of social media seemed to be large companies with prominent consumer facing brands.  It was appropriate to rationalize that your business was not Budweiser—you don’t run Super Bowl ads and you don’t participate in business-related social media.  It only made sense to focus marketing effort and budget elsewhere.

Is it reasonable to stay this course, or (as we’ve argued in the past few weeks) are there some fundamental changes taking place around this technology that could start to affect your business?

To find an answer to the question, it may be helpful to look beyond the real estate industry and consider what’s going on among a broader group of small and medium size businesses. 

If you think about it, the typical real estate office operates as a small business.  In turn, many of the marketing techniques that make a local small business service-provider successful would be applicable in a real estate office as well.

Hollis Thomases, a columnist for Inc. Magazine, just reported on several recent research projects involving small businesses and social media.  I think the findings will surprise you:

"It was only about a year ago that a Hiscox study found only 12% of small business owners 'described social media promotion as a must and nearly 50% weren't using social media at all.'

Oh, how times change.

A newly released study by Vocus now finds that for 77% of small and medium-size businesses (or SMBs), social media accounts for 25% or more of total marketing efforts.”

Let those percentages soak in a little bit.  The study highlights a significant turn of events.  

Here are some more data points:

“The Vocus study also found that 84% of SMBs plan to increase their spend on social media, mainly because 78% said social media 'has helped a great deal.'

In addition to investing more in social media, future plans include using more social media sites, sharing more, engaging more, hiring more help and spending more time on and in social media.”

When things change this quickly (remember these two studies were only one year apart), it is difficult to know how to react.  As I mentioned before, don't beat yourself up for not being on top of this six months ago!

But on the other hand, it would be a mistake to ignore this type of quickly mounting research data.  It may be time for you to develop and implement a social media strategy of your own.

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Editor's Note: This article was written by Ben Hess. Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. Comments or questions are welcome. If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email. If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

Overcoming the Fear of Social Media—Part 3

We spent last week discussing the apprehension many organizations feel towards using social media technologies for business applications (1, 2).  For many real estate owners and managers this leads to a hands-off (“Let’s see what the agents do with this new technology...”) approach to this topic.

This hesitation could be rooted in the possibility that unwise investments will be made in fad technologies that will soon disappear.  Or, like the Costco executive who once feared email, there could be some anxiety around the possibility of unleashing a force inside the organization that will distract agents from revenue producing activities.

Cartoon credit:  The Duffy Agency / Jetpack Media

So, many leaders remain on the fence, wondering how to handle this issue.  One way to gain some clarity on this topic is to learn how other, non-real estate, organizations are dealing with social media.  I’ll share a few ideas here from the research I referenced in my last blog, but I also encourage you to seek out this type of information on your own.

The Gartner consultants (referenced in the previous discussions) made the following “big picture” observations:

“Social media sponsors who successfully move beyond…negative attitudes tend to build their social media capability in one of two ways:

1. They either use it to demonstrate executive support and build confidence throughout the organization.

or

2. They start small with a narrow and specific purpose.

The large grocery retailer SUPERVALU provides a good example of how to overcome fear in an organization by demonstrating executive support.  CEO and President, Craig Herkert, saw social media as a way to respond faster to market needs, create a flatter organization, and share ideas and innovations… To this end, Herkert uses social media both to communicate with the company and also to respond to questions and comments directly and quickly.  He encourages his executive team to participate and even assigns comments and action items to them via social media where everyone can see.  This creates a cultural intimacy in a company with multiple brands and acquired chains.”

I know this sounds simple, but the executive team at SUPERVALU embraced social media by starting to use it themselves for day-to-day business communications inside the organization.

If you think about it, there was a time in the past when leadership teams within companies stopped sending paper memos to the individuals on their teams, and started using email.  At some point, that day needs to come with social media in your organization as well.

If this approach is a little too scary, you may want to dip your toe in with strategy #2: Start small with a narrow and specific purpose.  The Gartner researchers have some thoughts on this as well:

“[If you’re going to try a narrow approach], note that this is different than starting with a pilot.  Social media pilots don't work because they might limit the initial audience, which needs to grow organically and aggressively for success; or they tend to launch with a half-baked scope or technology that doesn't inspire the community to participate.

Instead, find a narrow purpose that engages people without threatening the organization.  For example, instead of deploying a social network for all its employees to collaborate more effectively (but only starting with a pilot for the "western region"), a company can build a social media solution for sales people to network specifically on how to successfully identify and overcome the top three sales objections.

In other words, consider a starter set of social media purposes that are highly magnetic to individuals to attract them into collaborative communities.  Purposes related to employee health and safety, customer support, or even organizing the company picnic, have all been used to move beyond fear and into action and experience.”

Bottom line: Unless you show leadership around the topic of social media and start using it yourself to empower business communications, you’ll never experience the collaborative benefits this new technology can offer.

While this may sound like a huge hassle, it may be one of the most important competitive differentiators among real estate companies in the next few years.  If you can’t speak the language of younger customers, those customers will find organizations who can. 

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Editor's Note: This article was written by Ben Hess. Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. Comments or questions are welcome. If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email. If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

Overcoming the Fear of Social Media—Part 2

In our last discussion, I told you about an exchange I had with a Costco executive about ten years ago, while my business partner and I were pitching the idea of using a social network to retain employees. 

While it may sound crazy now, this executive (at the time) was still unsure of the wisdom of giving employees free and easy access to email while on the job.  I’m sure that most of you could not even imagine imposing such a restriction on email today because it has evolved into a much needed and beneficial tool for business communication.  But, that was the lens executives were looking through at the time. 

So, here’s an important question for you:  Do you feel that social media is on the same trajectory that email was on a decade ago?  Or, more specifically, do you believe that social media will become a much needed and beneficial business tool as well? 

Before you start to beat yourself up for being “old school,” let me assure you that many of your peers are also struggling with this same issue.  Harvard Business Review recently highlighted the work of Anthony J. Bradley (Group Vice President, Gartner Research) and Mark P. McDonald (Group Vice President and Gartner Fellow, Gartner Executive Programs) on this topic.  The Gartner research was designed to capture a snapshot of how business leaders feel about the future of social media.  Here are some of the researchers’ thoughts: 

“In just a few years, social media has come to dominate many of our personal communications.  We collaborate daily, sometimes productively, sometimes not.  Most organizations, however, still view social media as a threat to productivity, intellectual capital, security, privacy, management authority, or regulatory compliance.  In fact, this is the most common attitude among the more than 250 organizations in the study.” 

The research shows that most companies have yet to embrace a positive attitude toward using social media for true business value.  But, the results are not as out-of-balance as you might imagine: 

“Overall, respondents were split 50/50 between a positive and challenged attitude towards social media with many indicating that they recognize the potential for social media to address strategic needs and generate durable change.” 

Among the challenged attitudes (this is consultant speak for negative) about social media, the most common emotion documented, by quite a large margin, is fearfulness.  In essence, many business leaders are worried when they consider this topic because it is difficult to predict how the technology will impact their companies and industries. 

While some caution is always appropriate when new things come along, maintaining a fearful attitude can be stifling to an organization. 

“The trouble with a fearful attitude is that an organization often doesn't take a specific stance: it discourages and even prohibits the use of social media.  While this approach reduces the potential for undesirable behavior — that's the reason for restriction — it also stifles any business value that might be derived from grassroots use of social media.”

Let’s zero in on the real estate industry to finish up this discussion.  I’ve not noticed much discouraging or prohibiting of social media among in the real estate industry.  With independent contractors as agents, most owners find it difficult to prohibit much of anything. 

However, I don’t see much strategic sponsoring of social media strategies by real estate companies either.  Instead, there is an ad hoc “do it your own way and let the leadership team know how it goes” attitude.  In the background, there is a lot of cringing and even some hand-wringing that goes on as managers watch the messiness of social media play out in front of them.  Most of the messiness relates to the inappropriate combining of personal and professional social circles. 

Why is there no strategic plan for social media in most real estate companies?  Because there is fear and uncertainty about the impact this technology will have on the real estate business in the future. 

In our next discussion, we’ll learn how organizations in other industries are dealing with this fear and uncertainty and how you can start to set a strategic direction for your organization.

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Editor's Note: This article was written by Ben Hess. Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. Comments or questions are welcome. If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email. If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

Overcoming the Fear of Social Media

Here’s a crazy confession.  In 1999, I started a social media company.   

I’m not kidding. 

I was working for a high-tech company in Oregon at the time, and I developed a relationship with a brilliant software developer in Vancouver, BC.  Ten years earlier, this developer successfully launched a payroll software company and had some extra time to dedicate toward side projects.  One of those projects was called “Community Circles.”   

Community Circles was the software backbone for a new online social network, but it needed to be applied to a compelling problem.  At the time, that problem was employee retention at large companies.   

As you may remember, this was the height of the “dot-com” bubble.  Traditional companies were having a very difficult time retaining their best employees.  Many were running off to new, exciting startups that were offering lucrative stock options and crazy benefits.   

How could a boring old traditional company compete with such enticing options?  Part of the answer to this problem (in our opinion) was....close personal relationships inside the company.  The rationale was that if an employee had close relationships within their existing company, it would be painful for them to leave.    

What better way to foster these relationships than a private online social network?  Since social networks were not available outside the company (ex. Facebook), an employee would be cut off from the social network if they left the company. 

By the time we launched pilot programs the next year, we were marketing the social networks as “PlateSpinner.”  The focus was on Gen X employees who were having a difficult time balancing their work and personal lives. 

Long story short—not long after we got up and running with our pilots, the "dot-com crash" occurred.  We quickly saw our “compelling problem” evaporate because unemployment was rising and those traditional companies were now having no problem with retention.  Not long after the employment tide changed, PlateSpinner died. 

This is a classic entrepreneurial story of having a great idea…at the wrong time.  In hindsight, the technology was not yet available to support the concept of an online social network.  The main problem was that high-speed internet connections were not common enough yet, and much of what makes a social network interesting requires larger bandwidths.    

By now, you might be wondering why I’m telling you this story.  The purpose is to provide you some background information, leading up to an important interaction that occurred while we were introducing large companies to the Platespinner social network back in the spring of 2000...  

The interaction happened in a meeting with one of the executives at Costco.  As you may know, Costco is headquartered in Seattle and was trying, at the time, to keep talented employees from joining crazy little retailing startups, like Amazon.com and HomeGrocer.com.  Costco had the need for a product like Platespinner. 

As we explained the concept of an online social network to this executive (he was in his mid-sixties), he stopped the presentation about halfway through and asked this question: 

“Would using this product require that employees have access to a computer and the internet?”

“Yes, it does,” I answered.

“If that’s the case,” he responded, “I don’t think we would be interested in giving our employees access to such a technology.  A couple of years ago, we gave them access to email, and it has been nearly impossible to control.  All they do is talk to each other now—no one seems to do any work!” 

At that point in time, what emotion was that executive experiencing?    

Fear. 

He was fearful of unleashing a technology in his company that would spiral out of control and cause his employees to lose focus and waste time.   

Looking back, I’m surprised at his insight.  Back in the year 2000, this executive was able to quickly get his arms around a new technology that would not become mainstream in the business world for another decade.  And, as he thought through the implications of such an innovation, he understood the apprehension that he and other business leaders would experience if online social networking was made available to employees. 

Now...fast forward to 2012.  While online social networks are now near ubiquitous in society and very common in businesses, the number one emotion that business leaders experience when talking about social networks is still fear. 

Over the next couple of discussions, we’ll delve into some research that Harvard Business Review has published on this topic and learn how progressive organizations are overcoming the fear of embracing social networking technologies.  The promised benefits of the social networking revolution are on the other side of this chasm.

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Editor's Note: This article was written by Ben Hess. Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. Comments or questions are welcome. If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email. If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

Overfishing: Why Your Experienced Recruiting Tactics Will Continue to Produce Diminished Returns

In the Northwest, many of us love to fish.  At times, it's too many.  For me, nothing is more frustrating than investing a bunch of time and effort into a fishing expedition, only to find out that everyone else had the exact same idea.   

This happened to two of my sons recently, who went salmon fishing with a neighbor on Lake Wenatchee in central Washington.  At this particular spot, it is common to have to wait more than an hour to launch your boat at 4:30am and then join hundreds of other boats who are all competing to stake a claim in the lake's most productive fishing spots.  

And all these anglers are not just fishing for the same fish, they are there at the same time, using the same fishing gear and deploying the same techniques to attempt to catch the salmon that have migrated into the lake.  To make things even more frustrating, the salmon are at a point in their reproductive cycle where they are no longer eating.   

To get them to "bite," specialized gear (flashy metal plates attached to down-riggers)  is used to annoy the salmon and entice them to react. Think of someone waving something in your face and instead of batting it away with your hands (salmon don't have hands), they bite the annoying object in an attempt to get it to leave.  No bait or lures are used in the process, just a bare hook. 

I know this all sounds a bit crazy if you've never been exposed to this type of fishing.  But, there is a core underlying principle that makes this whole process work.  Any idea what is it?    

Large numbers of fish congregate in one place. 

In Lake Wenatchee this year, there are about 60,000 sockeye salmon that enter the lake on their way upstream to spawn.  About 10,000 will be caught while passing through the lake.  The fish and wildlife scientists estimate that 25,000 salmon need to make it through the lake in order to produce a healthy spawn.  Since about 50,000 will swim through the lake and continue up rivers and creeks to spawn, there will be fish in future years to continue the process.   

What does all this have to do with recruiting?  The same principle that causes salmon fishing to be successful in Lake Wenatchee causes your experienced agent recruiting efforts to be successful in your office:   

You need to find where the candidates are congregating and make sure you're there.  

Many hiring managers in the real estate industry are fishing in places where less and less candidates are congregating. For example, the number of experienced agents who are willing to receive, read, and respond to drip email campaigns is very small.  And yet many hiring managers still expect this methodolgy to produce results.   If everyone is fishing for the small number of these candidates, this "recuiting water" becomes overfished.  Even if your techniques and exectuion are flawless, it will not produce a consisent flow of hires.

So, if the candidates you're after are not sitting in front of their email waiting for your drip email campaign, what are they doing?   They are spending time on social networks.  John Sumser, the founder and editor of HRExaminer Online Magazine, puts it this way in one of his recent blog postings:

"The essence of great recruiting is to fish where the fish are.  As times change, the ‘recruiting waters’ get overfished.  This is what makes the profession so highly flexible.  Over the course of a decade, the success of one technique creates the demand for the next.

More than any other corporate function, recruiting involves adaptation to rapidly changing markets.  Companies that shift their methods with the times, thrive.  Companies that don’t, wither.

In 2012, that means learning how to use social media as a part of your recruiting effort.  In a few short years, the center of the Internet moved from static sites to the more vibrant and interactive universe of online networks.  Job boards give way to social media as users migrate to the new world.

Here are a few stats that put the story in perspective:

• 23% of all hours spent online are spent on a social media site
• 80% of all Internet users are members of at least one social network
• 66% of all Americans use a social network
• 25% of all American internet traffic is on Facebook alone"

If you haven't done so already, it's probably time to seriously consider making social media techniques part of your recruiting strategy.  The candidates are starting to pool in such significant numbers that it only makes sense to put some of your recruiting effort in this area. 

But, how do you become effective in this new recruiting arena?  That's what we'll be discussing over the next month or so in WorkPuzzle.  The good news is that your industry (and many other industries) are early in the process of figuring all this out.  There are some boats starting to show up on the water, but everyone is still struggling to discover the techniques that produce results.  Hopefully, we can get you pointed in the right direction.

The last picture is of Camden, my 15-year old son, who landed this big sockeye salmon.  Living in the Northwest in a wonderful thing! 

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Editor's Note: This article was written by Ben Hess. Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. Comments or questions are welcome. If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email. If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

Employment Brand: What Do Young Candidates Really Think of Your Organization?

Real estate companies spend a lot of time, effort, and resources managing their consumer brands...and rightfully so.  If someone is going to buy or sell a home, the perception the individual has of your company’s brand will play a major role in their choice of an agent.

Think of the emotions you’d like a consumer to experience when they think of your company.  Maybe these are some of the things your brand stands for:  well-established, trusted, experienced, competent, dependable, innovative, phenomenal customer service, etc. 

While all these are great attributes and characteristics that most any consumer would desire in a real estate company handling a transaction, they may cloud the water when it comes to representing yourself to potential candidates...especially when it comes to younger candidates. 

Many well-established companies are struggling with this issue.  Not everyone can be Zappos (a progressive online retailer based in Las Vegas), Kixeye (an edgy game developer that makes Entertainment Arts and Zynga look like fuddy-duds), or even Zillow.  In fact, many companies need to be seen as dependable, but still desirable places to work for the younger generations. 

Much has been written on this topic, and there are some companies that have spent fortunes trying to reconcile this dichotomy.  One of the most successful case studies is this effort is Enterprise Rent-a-Car.  Started in 1957, Enterprise now has more than 5,000 offices in North America.  Enterprise is not exactly an exciting new startup company, and yet is consistently named one of the top companies in the United States for launching a career.  Take a look at the Enterprise Career site and see how masterful they’ve become at solving this problem. 

But, what if you don’t have the resources to build a far-reaching branding campaign to make such a distinction between your consumer brand and your employment brand?  There is still much you can do to make this a reality—especially if your cognizant that a distinction needs to be made. 

The most natural place for a hiring manager to start transforming your employment brand is during the interviews you’re conducting with younger candidates.  This approach is low cost and can have a profound impact on your office as you bring in new hires who are the flesh and blood realities of your employment brand.   

To interview younger candidates more successfully, you’ll need a better understanding of what they see as interesting and engaging in a potential employer.  

To help in this effort, I’d like to point you to some insight provided by Gary Hamel, best-selling author and professor at the London Business School.  Last March, Dr. Hamel published What Matters Now, an insightful book on change, competition, and innovation.  And recently, he followed-up with an ERE article, connecting the principles in his book to the topic of hiring the next generation of top performers. 

More specifically, Dr. Hamel addresses the mindset that young candidates consistently display in evaluating whether an established company is “with it” or “past it.”   

The article highlights 12 of these mindsets, but I’ve selected the five that I find most insightful: 

1.  Contribution counts for more than credentials.  When you post a video to YouTube, no one asks you if you went to film school.  When you write a blog, no one cares whether or not you have a journalism degree.  Position, title, and academic degrees — none of the usual status differentiators carry much weight online.  [In progressive companies], what counts is not your resume, but what you can contribute. 

2.  Tasks are chosen, not assigned.  The internet is an opt-in economy.  Whether contributing to a blog, working on an open source project, or sharing advice in a forum, people choose to work on the things that interest them.  Everyone is an independent contractor and everyone scratches his own itch.  Progressive companies encourage work to be done in this way as well. 

3.  Power comes from sharing, not hoarding.  The Web is also a gift economy.  To gain influence and status, you have to give away your expertise and content.  And you must do it quickly; if you don’t, someone else will beat you to the punch and garner the credit that might have been yours.  [In progressive companies], there are lots of incentives to share and few to hoard. 

4.  Mediocrity gets exposed.  Online rating systems have become ubiquitous — for hotels, books, local businesses, and products of every sort.  Though not every review is useful, in the aggregate they provide a good guide to what’s remarkable and what’s rubbish.  In traditional organizations, employees don’t get to rate much of anything.  As a result, one often finds a ‘‘conspiracy of the mediocre’’ — ‘‘I won’t question your decisions or your effectiveness, if you don’t question mine.’’  There are no such cabals [in progressive companies].  If you’re inadequate, you’ll be found out. 

5.  Leaders serve rather than preside.  [Among progressive companies], every leader is a servant leader; no one has the power to command or sanction.  Credible arguments, demonstrated expertise, and selfless behavior are the only levers for getting things done.  Forget this [in your organization], and your followers will soon desert you. 

If you’re interested in the other seven mindsets, read the rest of Dr. Hamel’s article.  If you’re more strategic and want to change how your company operates, you may want to pick up his book. 

Here is the bottom line:  These mindsets will resonate with the younger candidates that you’re interviewing.  Also, many of these principles dovetail nicely into the business processes and culture that most hiring managers are trying to create and maintain.  There is a win-win in this connection and something that can differentiate you from those stodgy competitors who are in an increasingly weak position to lure your candidates away.  

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Editor's Note: This article was written by Ben Hess. Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. Comments or questions are welcome. If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email. If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

Surprise Your Candidates: Play the Respect Card

I think I highlighted one of Peter Weddle’s articles a couple of months ago, and I usually like to let more time go by before I cite him again as a source for a new discussion.

But, the content in his latest newsletter was just too good to pass up.

Why?  Because Peter (unknowingly) identifies a hiring advantage that real estate companies can quickly and easily use to differentiate themselves from traditional employers.

This may surprise you, but that differentiator is respect.

I wish that I could report there has been a sudden and unexpected groundswell of respect that candidates have gained for the real estate industry in recent months.  While this would be well-deserved among many of our clients, there is no real evidence that any change in behaviour has actually occured here.

The change has instead happened among traditional companies who hire employees.  Many of these companies have become very disrespectful toward their applicants, and many candidates have noticed this change.

Peter makes the following observation from the candidate’s perspective:

“For the first time in modern American history, those in transition now have to worry about serial unemployment.  They must endure a grueling and often lengthy job search, and then they have to deal with the ever-present possibility that they may lose their job 6, 12 or 18 months down the road.  No sooner are they employed, it seems, than they face the prospect of becoming unemployed all over again.

There are, of course, a range of reasons for this phenomenon.  The lousy economy, changing consumer tastes, and the introduction of new technology certainly deserve some of the blame.  In far too many cases, however, there's another cause.  It's employers behaving badly.

What does that mean?

Bad employer behavior includes misrepresenting the nature of a job - the tasks it involves or its compensation - and/or the nature of the organization - its culture, values and leadership.  The former is rare because it can only occur if recruiters and other employees are complicit in the cover-up and thankfully few are willing to do so.  The latter, on the other hand, occurs far more frequently than it should primarily because the warning signs are overlooked or, worse, ignored.”

At first, you may not see traditional employers as your competitors, but when it comes to attracting and hiring talented candidates, they are the ones who most commonly lure candidates away.

And while they seem to have the “unfair advantage” of offering upfront salary and benefits, this advantage has a disproportionate impact on desperate people—these are the individuals who put up with the abuse and ignore warning signs of poor employers.

Every real estate hiring manager knows that desperate candidates do not make good real estate agents.  They typically cannot afford the start-up costs and sustain focus on the long-term payoff of a real estate career.

So, an interesting dynamic has developed-- We have traditional employers who disrespect candidates and naturally filter out the desperate candidates for themselves.  Who’s left in the pool?  Non-desperate candidates who have the resources, talents, and self-esteem to not jump at the first thing thrown their way.

Anytime your competitors act badly, it’s an opportunity for you to differentiate yourself.  But you have to counter their missteps with good behavior of your own.

Peter goes on to describe how this is achieved in the hiring process (again, from the candidate’s perspective):

“A decent employer is one that provides the environment, encouragement and support for you to succeed.  In short, it's an organization that respects you as a person of talent.  It recognizes the contribution you make to its success and treats you accordingly.  As a consequence, you are able to perform at your peak, and that outcome - excelling at your work - is the best guarantor of continued employment.

Respect, however, is a two-way street.  Yes, an employer should respect you, but you must also respect yourself.  You must think enough of your talent to ensure you can always deliver it on-the-job.  You must constantly refresh your skills and knowledge so that your talent is as strong, versatile and durable as it can be and must be in today's highly competitive global economy.

With self-respect in place, you are in the right position to evaluate the level of respect you would get from prospective employers.  How do you make that judgment?  Look for telltale signs in the recruiting process of each organization.

For example:

• Does the employer acknowledge the receipt of your resume when you submit it and thank you for doing so?
• Does the employer keep you informed of your status as the evaluation process unfolds?
• Does the employer remove filled positions promptly so you are not applying for jobs that are no longer available?
• Does the employer provide a clear and complete description of its culture and values on its organizational web-site and/or Facebook page?

If you are invited in for an interview, are you greeted in a friendly and courteous way or are you treated as if you're just another widget with DNA?

And, while you are interviewing, are you able to meet with the people who would be your coworkers and are they able to speak freely about their working conditions?”

All of this boils down to respect.  Are you willing to put in the time, effort, and focus on details to show another human being respect in the hiring process?  If you make this commitment, you’ll be well-positioned to attract and engage the next generation of talented agents for your office.  If not, know that you’ll be in head-to-head competition with traditional employers to hire desperate candidates.  That’s a game you can’t win--even if you do make the hire.

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Editor's Note: This article was written by Ben Hess. Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. Comments or questions are welcome. If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email. If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

Candidate Sourcing: How Do Candidates Search for Jobs?

There seems to be a fascination with the intersection between a person’s quest to find meaningful employment and the technologies that enable such an individual to be successful in that venture. 

In fact, if I were to categorize the questions that I get from our clients, more than 50% of the inquiries relate to this issue.  Owners and Hiring Mangers often have questions such as … 

• How does top talent evaluate new opportunities when they become dissatisfied with their current employer/career? 
• What really gets a candidate’s attention? 
• What impact have online social networks had on candidate behaviors? 
• Where are candidates going on the internet to find jobs? 

...and many more. 

As you probably know, this is a complex topic.  The Tidemark team spends most of our working hours trying to find answers to these questions.  As insights are gained, we use this information to tweak our methodologies and optimize our results. 

Last week, I captured some new insights that I think are worth sharing.  The new information came in the form of research that was recently conducted by PeopleFluent, a talent management company headquartered in Raleigh, NC.  The research was co-sponsored by SmartPost, a subsidiary of the Bernard Hodes Group, a prominent global HR consulting firm. 

The researchers cataloged the performance of more than 27,000 job boards, company career pages, and other employment-related internet destinations in the first six months of 2012.  The database evaluated the behavior of more than 45 million employment related website visits across a diverse set of industries and locations (global). 

Here are some of the findings: 

1.  General source of the hire.  About 55% of candidates who eventually are hired come from outside sources, such as job boards and other career-related sites.  About 45% of candidates come from internal sources, such as employee referrals and company-sponsored career pages (ie. what is behind the “career tab” on your home page). 

2.  Impact of Job Aggregation.  The biggest surprise in the research is the continued growth of job aggregators -- particularly Indeed. 

A job aggregator is an employment website that collects job postings from many other sources and lists them on one site.  In essence, it’s a search engine for job opportunities.   

If you were to go onto Google and type in “Italian Restaurants Seattle,” Google would return a list of appropriate entries.  If you were to go to Indeed and type in “Marketing Jobs Seattle,” an appropriate list of job openings would be returned.  An Indeed listing could connect the candidate directly to an employer’s website, or refer a candidate to a job listing on another job board, such as Monster. 

What does this mean for a real estate company?  In order to be effective at sourcing candidates, you’ll have to become increasingly proficient at search engine optimization (SEO).  Even if you post ads on prominent job boards, such as Monster and CareerBuilder, your job opportunity may not be prominently displayed in a job aggregator like Indeed unless it is optimized for their environment.  And without getting Indeed’s traffic (three out of four job searchers start there), the chances of getting your job opening viewed is greatly diminished. 

Indeed is applying a principle that is nearly ubiquitous on the internet:  Influence cannot be bought, it must be earned. 

3.  LinkedIn is starting to have an impact on candidate behavior.  If you take the job aggregators out of the previous slide, here is how the rest of the major players in candidate sourcing rank:

You’ll notice right away that LinkedIn has recently become a significant force among traditional job boards.  This is a new development that may be attributed to the increased direct sales effort they recently placed on the job search part of their business. 

Does this mean that public social networks will have a new place at the candidate sourcing table?  Probably not.  Facebook is a minor player and will probably remain so unless their newly announced job board initiative gains traction (and it has very little to do with being a social network).  LinkedIn didn’t start to prosper in the candidate sourcing arena until they started selling and acting like a job board. 

The big coup in the candidate sourcing marketplace is the dominance of Indeed.  Just like you’d be foolish to start a high volume website without considering how Google would impact traffic, candidate sourcing plans now have to compensate for the dominance of Indeed. 

Bottom line:  Most recruiting problems start out as sourcing problems.  It’s tough to be selective and commit yourself to hiring the most talented individuals without an abundance of individuals from which to choose.  The first step to “getting to yes” with your talented new hires is being able to frequently say “no” to the candidates who are not a fit.

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Editor's Note: This article was written by Ben Hess. Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. Comments or questions are welcome. If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email. If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

The Toggl Experiment: Time-Tracking Tasks

I'd like to follow-up on a discussion that Dave started earlier this month (1, 2) on the importance of finding and consistently following a system.  One of the tools he suggested using as part of his quest to stay on track was a web-based time tracking tool called Toggl.   

There is a story around this tool that I think is worth sharing... 

Toggl was first brought to my attention by another Tidemark partner as a way of tracking the contributions that were being made on various projects.  In essence, it is a web-based software application that asks one simple question: 

“What are you working on?” 

The user types a simple task description (for example:  Preparing a WorkPuzzle blog) and then presses a “start” button.  At this point, a timer starts ticking away and documents the time the user is dedicating to this task. 

Since Tidemark develops recruiting software, I appreciate an elegant software design.  On this front, Toggl has some great characteristics—simple to use, works well on any browser/computer platform, has both mobile and desktop applications that integrate with its core web-based environment, etc...  And perhaps most importantly, the user interface design is well done—simple and easy to use. 

While these characteristics are noteworthy, they are not what makes Toggl such a useful tool.  Like most successful software businesses, Toggl helps solve a simple problem:  

The fact is...most people are disengaged and waste a lot of time at work.

This business reality has been well-documented over the last decade and has probably been going on for many years before that.  Kyle Lagunas, an HR Market Analyst for the popular blog, Software Advice, recently wrote a very insightful article on Engagement, that highlights recent Towers Watson research revealing that more than 60% of the U.S. workforce is not fully engaged in their work.  He also cites Gallup research, estimating that this lack of engagement costs businesses in the United States more than $300 billion in lost productivity each year. 

While I’ve read and known about this problem for years, I’ve never considered myself part of this “disengaged” group.  I’ve always prided myself in tightly scheduling events, creating detailed tasks list, and seeking out accountability.  

I work hard and stay focused.   

At least I thought I did...until I started using Toggl.    

Toggl has opened my eyes to a new reality.  It has forced me to reach a new level of self-awareness that has been (initially) disheartening.  I'm find myself asking these types of questions quite frequently: 

“How could that task take so long?” 

“Did I really spend two hours on email yesterday?  I don’t seem to have accomplished much with those dialogs.” 

“I’ve started this task four times and I’m constantly feeling distracted.  What is it about this task that I don’t like doing?”

“Why is there 15 minutes of downtime between tasks (you can’t push the start button until you start the next task)?  Could that downtime be used for something that renews my mind and spirit?” 

In essence, Toggl has given me the ability to look backwards—across my day, across my week, and eventually across my year.  While I’ve always been pretty good at putting together a plan, I was surprised to learn how poor I am at executing that plan. 

So, thank you Toggl, for creating a great tool.  If you’d like to try Toggl for yourself, check out their take a tour page.  It is a free app for personal use and not very expensive to use with a team.

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Editor's Note: This article was written by Ben Hess. Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. Comments or questions are welcome. If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email. If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

Social Media: What You Can Learn From the Fortune 100

You've probably noticed that it is very difficult to start a major new business trend.  If you are smart and lucky enough to develop a fascinating new technology, you might pull-off such an accomplishment (the people who make this happen usually end up as multi-millionaires).  However, most trends are developed and sustained by large companies who have the capital and talent to try lots of things.  Through trial and error, trends emerge and gain traction in the general business community.

While most real estate companies do not have the capital to fuel this type of innovation, it doesn't take a lot of resources to watch what the bigger companies are doing and learn from their investments.  Not everything the "big boys" are accomplishing will be relevant to your organization, but there is much that you can take-away and apply.  

I found a great example of such trending earlier this week.  A three-year study was recently conducted by Burson-Marsteller, a global public relations/communication firm that tracks the use of social media by Fortune 100 companies.  There are several ways to digest the findings of the study, but for the purpose of our discussion, I'll share the info-graphic they created to summarize their conclusions.

How could some of this trending information apply to a real estate company?  Here are some of my thoughts:

1. Twitter is turning out to be a much bigger deal than most people would have guessed.  We've known for awhile it is a great tool for starting a revolution to overthrow your government or organizing a flash mob to ransack Walmart, but promoting your business?  It's true.  This venue is now significantly larger than Facebook for business applications.  If you don't have a Twitter account for your office, you should consider creating one and learning how to use it.  Among other things, it is a great tool for driving traffic to your private social network (a trend we discussed a couple of weeks ago in WorkPuzzle, 1, 2, 3).
2. Large companies can no longer ignore YouTube.  Video used to be reserved for those who could afford the large production and distribution costs of making commercials.  There was a comfortable barrier to entry that kept most real estate companies (and millions or other small businesses) from participating.  Of course, this has been trending for awhile, but the data suggests a tipping point has probably been reached.  There are now enough eyeballs on YouTube to make it a useful advertising venue for almost any company.  If you don't have a YouTube channel, it might be time to get one.
3. The death of any social network implementation is the lack of useful and relevant information.  Users disengage and leave if they are not receiving constant benefit from their participation.  Most large companies are now creating systems to ensure consistent engagement.  If you're going to create and manage a social networking application for your office, you'll probably need similar systems as well.  
4. Pace yourself.  The use of multiple platforms is something that large companies can and probably need to embrace.  For a real estate company, it might be better to become proficient on one platform first and then expand once some level of mastery has been obtained. 

If you'd like to read more about this research, there is both an executive summary and a 40-slide presentation deck that is available.  I've just brushed the surface on this--there is much more to learn.

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Editor's Note: This article was written by Ben Hess. Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. Comments or questions are welcome. If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email. If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.