WorkPuzzle

Employment Brand Part 2: What Is an Employment Brand and How Do I Develop One?

I’ve received a few questions back on the last WorkPuzzle I published.  Apparently, the concept of an “employment brand” is a new idea to many of you.  

Simply put, your employer brand is the image of your organization in the mind of current employees and key stakeholders in the external market (active and passive candidates, clients, customers and other key stakeholders).

So, employer branding activities are the sum of a company’s efforts to communicate to prospective and existing staff what makes your company a desirable place to work, and the active management of a company’s image as seen through the eyes of its potential hires.  (Definition Source)

When we think about this concept, our mind naturally drifts to the large businesses that have prominent brands.  Take a look at AT&T’s career page and you’ll see a great example of how the branding efforts of a well-known consumer brand now naturally crossover to the realm of employment branding.

Of course, this type of implementation would be beyond the reach of most local or even regional real estate companies.  And I would argue that it wouldn’t be very effective either.  While many real estate companies certainly spend money on building their image in the mind of consumers, the crossover to employment branding is not as natural.  Why?  Because the business model of most real estate companies is such that each local office tends to have its own culture.  And this culture (and in essence its brand) is largely driven by the owner or manager of that local office.

For real estate offices, the employment brand tends to be heavily influenced by the personal brand of the manager of a particular local office. 

When you’re attempting to recruit new individuals to your team, the first questions that go through the minds of candidates have to do with the brand of the local office (What is the office about, and is it a place I can see myself working?) and the brand of the manager (Is this the type of person I want to work with?  Does his/her team of agents have characteristics that are intriguing to me? ).

Much of our discussion about employment branding is going to focus on the personal brand of the manager or owner of an office.  And, this is where things get interesting. 

The concept of personal branding was perhaps initially discussed in Tom Peter’s classic article “The Brand Called You,” first published in 1997.  As social networking has exploded in the last 5 years, so have the tools that equip a person to develop and promulgate a personal brand.

So, what’s it take to build a personal brand as a manager?  Here are 4 steps that you should consider:

1.  Discover Your Brand
2.  Create Your Brand
3.  Communicate Your Brand
4.  Maintain Your Brand

We’ll discuss how to Discovering Your Brand today, and then cover the remaining topics in upcoming discussions. 

Branding expert and author, Dan Schwabell, offers this advice on discovering your personal brand:

“The single biggest mistake people make is that they either brand themselves just for the sake of doing it or that they fail to invest time in learning about what’s in their best interests. The key to success, and this isn’t revolutionary, is to be compensated based on your passion. In order to find your passion, you need a lot of time to think, some luck and you need to do some research online to figure out what’s out there.

Brand discovery is about figuring out what you want to do for the rest of your life, setting goals, writing down a mission, vision and personal brand statement (what you do and who you serve), as well as creating a development plan. Have you ever been called intelligent or humorous by your peers or coworkers? That description is part of your brand, especially if you feel those attributed pertain to you. To know if you’ve discovered your brand, you need to make this equation equal:

Your self-impression = How people perceive you

Before you enter the next step in the personal branding process, you’ll want to select a niche, whereby you can be the master of your domain. When I say domain, I mean an area where there aren’t many competitors Once you sort this all out, now it’s time to create your brand.”

I encourage you to take some time to put some thought into Schwabell’s suggestions and develop a clear vision of what you want those in your close geographic are to think of you and your office.

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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: Does Anyone Really Want to Work For You?

Earlier this week, I referenced an article written by John Sumser.  John is a recruiting guru from whom I've learned a lot over the last several years.  While John's blog is on my Google Reader, I often skip over his articles because I really have to be in a position to concentrate to digest his articles.

Every once in awhile, I dive into a month or two worth of his articles for a couple of hours and try to figure out what he’s saying.  Typically, I walk away with something that changes my way of thinking.

I did this over the weekend, and the same held true.  John recently wrote an article on employment brands that is quite insightful.  I'll publish it here, and then spend the next couple of WorkPuzzles discussing its implications for the real estate industry.

"Employment Branding is the craft of being so completely organized that you are ready with the right message for the right person when she comes along.

A brand is a relationship.

Brands only matter to the people who care about them.  Mention the brand name outside of the circle of people who have the relationship and you will receive shoulder shrugs.  Mention it inside the circle and you can spark a conversation full of passion and opinion.

The only brands that matter are the ones that people care about.

The theory and development of branding has been reserved, historically, for companies that could afford large broadcast media campaigns.  The best examples of brand marketing are consumer product companies, from automobiles to popular music to varieties of American Cheese.  The term brand is used to cover a wide range of circumstances from name recognition to deep affinity.

Contemporary talk about 'personal branding' generally refers to the act of managing the fifteen minutes of fame that social media bestows.  Peppers and Rogers, the authors of popular books on database and relationship marketing, move the concept to tightly grouped members of a database.

It is useful to think about branding as an early stage technology.  Purely a 20th Century invention, branding, like many first generation technologies, began in organizations that could afford clumsy and inefficient approaches because of their sheer size.  For the past 70 years, branding has been a game of extensive spending to attract large numbers of people to a single product or company.

Today, however, the tools needed to build very clear, very small niche oriented brands are readily available.  Like much of marketing, the tools are now available from the desktop.  This 'downward evolution' of marketing creates both expanded opportunity and expanded responsibility at the department and operating unit level."

Notice what he says in that last paragraph:  "…the tools needed to build very clear, very small niche oriented brands are readily available."  This is great news for those who recruit for a living.

Do you see yourself (you personally) as having a brand?  Does your office (not your company as a whole) have a brand?  What do the candidates that you're trying to recruit think about your office's brand?  Do they wish they could be part of a team like the one you manage, or do they shrug their shoulders?

These are all important questions if you’re going to be successful at recruiting.  It's funny how much easier recruiting gets if you start attracting... 

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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.

Population Dynamics 2: Understanding Fundamental Changes

Last Friday, I had the opportunity to spend some time with the owners and managers of a large real estate company in the Northwest.  I enjoy these meetings because it gives me an opportunity to see and hear the realities of the business challenges many of you are facing.

The message I heard on Friday...the real estate world is changing quickly and there is a constant need to evaluate and plot a course to meet the changes.  As leaders struggle with this issue, our first inclination is to focus on surface issues (i.e. How do my circumstances today resemble something that happened in the past?).  But by doing this, there is a tendency to overlook the core issues that are responsible for the changes.

I touched on this topic last week.  How do you first find the “horizon” in your recruiting world and then work on developing tactics that meet reality?  As you ask yourself this question and wrestle with the answers, you may find that your “reality” is much different than you expected and even more troublesome to understand.

I ran across a discussion by John Sumser over the weekend that does a great job of illustrating one of these fundamental changes.  The topic is the traditional understanding of a population pyramid.

“I am going to stick with the pyramid idea just a little longer.  The theme is so embedded in our world view that it shapes the way we see, imagine and execute our possibilities.

The ‘Recruiting Funnel', where masses of candidates are winnowed down to a select few, is an example of pyramid theory.  The whole notion emerges from the longstanding shape of families and governments:  a few old people running things, lots of younger people ‘being run’.  It’s mommy, daddy, and five kids.  It’s the foundation of hierarchical management.  Large organizations, with their single point (winnowing) authority, perpetuate the view that pyramids are essential elements of society.

The reality is that family structure has changed.  One or two kids and two parents is not an organization that can be run hierarchically.  Combined with technology that is flattening our organizations, we’re in a transition period.  The pyramid is built into our perceptual framework and it’s outmoded.

Historically, economic growth depends on a pyramid structure.  More people, more work, more jobs, more goods.  We have no idea how to engineer growth without an underlying impetus of population expansion.”

So, John’s point is that the disruption of the traditional population pyramid changes everything.  It is a fundamental issue that must be understood in order to build successful recruiting strategies (or to run a government, or to market a college, or to build a restaurant clientele, etc.).  If you were to make plans without understanding this important piece of information, you'd struggle to be successful. 

I brought this example up to get you thinking about the fundamental issues that may be shaping your business.  Of course, population dynamics affect everyone, but many other important issues are industry specific. 

What are the foundational issues that have changed in your profession, industry, and community?  The companies that can successfully identify these issues and deploy tactics that address these changes are the ones who will find themselves significantly ahead of their competitors in the coming years.

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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.

Population Dynamics: Does Your Ideal Agent Really Exist?

As we start the New Year, many of our clients are putting together their recruiting plans for 2011.  It’s an exciting season for our company because we have the opportunity to hear about many new ideas, assist in implementation, and start to envision how 2011 will shape up.

As this process unfolds, I’ve noticed a trend.  Many companies tend to quickly focus their efforts on the tactics of recruiting and don’t take time to consider the bigger picture.  The tendency is to use last year’s methodologies as a baseline and then try to tweak things to get results.  Planning in this manner will result in missed opportunities.  Instead, take some time to step back and look at the horizon. 

In recruiting, the term “horizon” includes understanding the “population dynamics” of your area.  Once you’ve figured out who you want to recruit, you’ll need to know if there are enough potential candidates available in your recruiting area for optimal goal achievement.

Experienced agent recruiting, convincing experienced agents to leave their company and join your team, is a great example of one way to identify a group of potential agents.  You have a vision of your ideal agent.  This includes a list of characteristics such as revenue history, experience level, current company, reputation in the marketplace, etc.  The more complete and valid you make your ideal agent profile, the better your chances will be of finding an agent who will produce the needed revenue in your organization and help you realize a return on your recruiting efforts. 

But, do the population dynamics of your recruiting horizon support your vision?  If your requirements are too specific, you’ll be unable to meet your goal AND you’ll likely need to lower your standards and hire agents who do not meet your long-term objectives.  To get an answer to this question, consider some of these factors: 

1. Geography.   Get a map and draw a circle around your office.  As the radius, use whatever distance you believe people will reasonably travel to be part of your office.  Now, mark each competitive real estate office inside your circle on the map.  Next to the office, write the number of agents who work in that office.
2. Age / Gender.   While it is frowned upon by EEOC regulators to exclude anyone from your office based on age and gender, there is nothing wrong with focusing your proactive recruiting efforts on the specific individuals who will best meet the needs of your team in the years to come.  Many real estate offices have a substantial number of agents who will retire in the next few years.  You can increase the diversity in your office by hiring younger agents who can grow into their positions.  Also, some groups of clients are better served by hiring one gender rather than the other.  Again, the point is not to exclude anyone, rather to build your team with the optimal players who will maximize revenue.
3. Client Focus and Success.   Effective real estate sales execution is a neighborhood-by-neighborhood exercise.  If your office is getting shut out of certain neighborhoods by your competitors, then how can that problem be solved by recruiting?  It only makes sense to target the individual neighborhoods where you’re missing opportunities.  Can the agents who are successful in those neighborhoods be lured away from their companies?  If so, it’s a big win for your office.

There are probably several more population dynamics categories that can be targeted.  The point is that defining what kind of population is available is an important first step in building a recruiting plan.  If you don’t have this starting point, then deploying recruiting tactics may quickly and effectively lead you to an undesirable destination.

Going through an exercise like this will produce one of two results:  The hopeful result is that you’ll have identified exactly who you’re looking for, know whether the potential candidates exist in your recruiting horizon, and be ready to attack the challenge of hiring them with energy and excitement.  The more common result is that this exercise will help you realize that your objectives may not be realistic.  If this is your result, work to identify new sources for locating candidates and review well-thought-out compromises you are willing to make in order to meet your long-term objectives.  With either result, you’ll have a clearer view of your recruiting horizon and will have further defined your goals for the year. 

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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.

Trends and Opportunities for 2011: What Will the New Year Bring in the Recruiting World?

I know I mentioned on Monday that I would wrap up this discussion, but I found an outstanding article earlier this week that is worth sharing.  The article was written by Kevin Wheeler.  Kevin is a recruiting guru who has worked with many of the best companies in the United States.  He has become one of the most well-respected voices in the recruiting industry.  I’ve read many of Kevin's articles over the past several years and have benefited greatly from his viewpoint.

Kevin's recent article highlights some predictions for 2011 and is particularly insightful.  Since he doesn’t specialize in the real estate industry, I’ll provide some commentary on how Kevin's thoughts apply to what you may be experiencing.

Hiring Situation

“Mid-level hiring will remain slow, and there will be few additions to support administrative staff.  Much of this hiring will be outsourced to Recruitment Process Outsourcing companies (RPOs) and agencies that specialize in specific areas.  The demand for workers with minimal skills will shrink even further as technology replaces them.  Many organizations have already replaced receptionists with automated sign-in systems and automatic call systems.  Accounting and bookkeeping systems are using OCR to automatically input receipts and other data into their systems.”

“Mid-level hiring” is the category of positions that we see typically make a transition to the real estate industry.  The good news…the supply will be good (lots of people will remain out of work).  The bad news…many people in this position can’t afford to start a real estate career, or don’t want to risk giving up their current job (if they still have one).

Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO)

“RPO will continue to grow as a service with more sophisticated approaches and more technology.  Some firms will focus on specific regions or on functional verticals.  These RPOs will invest the time and conduct research that will help them build large communities of candidates with narrow, deep expertise.  They will do this cheaper and better than a corporate recruiter can because of dedicated resources and investment in technology.  Corporate recruiting functions need to build better ways to assess RPO firms, establish firm performance criteria, and negotiate contracts based on how well your needs are met, rather than on cost.”

In the interest of full disclosure, Tidemark is an RPO firm.  These are the issues we focus on every day and companies use our services because it’s cheaper and more effective than sourcing candidates on their own.

Talent Management

“I have long advocated that every organization should increase its focus on developing a holistic and integrated approach to talent.  That will begin to happen in earnest this year.  Every major survey, including those from Pricewaterhouse Coopers and the Boston Consulting Group, indicate that CEOs are now relentlessly focused on getting better people in their organizations and are willing to put the resources in place to make it happen.

Critical positions need to be clearly identified, and there should be a plan as to how those positions will be filled.  The plans should rely on a mixture of internal promotions/transfer as well as external placement.  Development should be a key component and lead to a percentage of positions being filled by newly trained internal candidates.  Entry-level hiring can feed this pool, as long as development and assessment are in place.  Rigorous performance assessment in real time as well as feedback to recruiting on success traits are also important parts of a successful talent management plan.”

As we talk to real estate leaders across the country, we constantly hear about the lack of talent at the first-level manager position (commonly referred to as a branch manager or sales manager).  This is, by far, the number one issue that limits growth for most real estate companies.  How can this be solved? Understand and apply the “talent management” strategies that companies in other industries have developed.  One quick warning…doing this is not quick, easy, or cheap.

Employment Brand

“Building a believable and vigorous brand will consume more time and resources than it did in 2010.  A recruiting website will be much less critical, although still important, to success.  It will be more important to use a variety of marketing tools, including targeted marketing, Twitter, and Facebook, as well as LinkedIn, to interest more people in learning about your organization and opportunities.”

We’ve spent a bunch of time in WorkPuzzle over the past year talking about positioning your company in the mind of the potential candidate.  Just like someone needs to envision your company as the best choice when buying or selling a house, they also need to see your company as one of the most desirable places to work in your local marketplace.

Internal Sourcing Teams

“Internal sourcing teams will morph from a focus on Internet search, which will remain a small part of the process, to a major focus on social media.  The purpose of the sourcing team will be to ensure a supply of interested people who can be turned into candidates by a combination of skilled recruiter involvement and sophisticated marketing tools.  These teams will be small, technically highly skilled, and capable of being community managers, marketers, and experts in identifying and assessing key candidates virtually.”

In late November and early December, Dave Mashburn wrote a WorkPuzzle series about Lessons from an Expert Recuiter.  This series (1,2,3,4) highlights Kevin’s point.  There is no substitute for having one of the most talented individuals in your company be the first line of interface to the candidates who are considering making a transition to a real estate career.

Social Media

“In every way, the backbone of the recruiting function will be its ability to use social media — the tools that connect and engage millions of potential candidates.  Their success will be in how effective they are in convincing people to take part in the sub-communities that they create for their firms.  This will require a strategy that has been carefully thought out and is revisited constantly and updated as its effectiveness is evaluated.

Whether they use Facebook, Hyves, LinkedIn, or another community is immaterial.  What matters is that the community they choose attracts the kind of people they need.  New smaller specialist communities may arise over the next year, and staying abreast of these, or even creating them, may make the difference between success and failure.”

This is an area that needs growth for many real estate companies and it’s an arena that is a major focus for our company in 2011.

Kevin’s Summary

"In many ways 2011 will look a lot like 2010 but with more focus on implementing the initiatives that were started in 2010 and in being realistic about the use of RPO, outsourcing, and the need to focus on critical positions."

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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.

Trends and Opportunities For 2011: Fantasy Team Hiring and Firing

This next trend was brought to my attention by an article that Peter Weddle recently wrote.  As I’ve mentioned in the past, Peter quite often is able to see and explain things that the rest of us don’t easily notice.  His insight on this topic is quite good.

Are you one of the 30 million people in the U.S. who participate in a fantasy sports league?  In not, you probably have relatives or friends who participate in this obsession.  The basic premise of the hobby is that participants select fictitious teams of players and then use real statistics to determine who wins or loses. Winning strategies usually involve continually selecting those with the best statistics and releasing those who don’t perform well.

Peter makes the point that during the recession, corporate America has developed their own “fantasy sports” techniques to manage employees.

“Employees may never have really been treated as assets – despite the sugar-coated words of their corporate executives – but today, they are managed as statistics.  Without any explanation or notice, companies have begun to prune their ranks of employees they deem to have less talent and to limit their hiring to only those who are perceived to have the most talent.  It is fantasy sports team management for real.

The term for this new approach is 'quiet recruiting.'  Even as employers continue to slim down their structure and lay off excess employees, they are silently trading out those considered less capable for those with more perceived value.

• In some cases, that value is acquired through 'bargain staffing.'  Employers simply hire an often younger and less experienced person who can do (or be taught to do) much of what an often older and more experienced person would accomplish, but at a much lower salary.

• In other cases, the value is acquired by 'all star staffing.' Employers trade out those in their workforce who they judge to be 'C level' performers (or worse) in order to adjust their structure and hire individuals with a track record of 'A level' performance.

Although seldom formally acknowledged, bargain staffing has always been a part of the American workplace.  If offshoring moved work to less expensive labor overseas, such 'downcosting' moved it to cheaper employees right here at home.  It is an insidious and often illegal strategy, but one that can effectively pare payroll and benefit expenses.  Hence, employers consistently disclaim any allegiance to age bias, but all too often practice de facto ageism in their staffing.

What’s new in the post-Great Recession era, therefore, is all star staffing.  For the first time ever, many companies are now hiring rank and file workers with the same score card and tactics they have long used to hire their most senior executives.  They are no longer content with a normal distribution of capability; they want, instead, to skew toward a preponderance of accomplished performers.

On the surface, that strategy would appear to be beneficial for America’s workers.  In reality, it’s quite the opposite.  Tens of millions of decent, dedicated and capable people—men and women who have successfully worked their entire lives—are now unemployed, unsuccessful in their search for a new job and unable to figure out why.”

Certainly the ethics of this strategy could be argued both ways. It is a problem that involves unfair treatment and potentially illegal behavior.  But, the reality is that this kind of hiring/firing is going on in the workplace and it will probably continue until the employer/employee balance shifts back to the employee.

Here’s the good news:  As a recruiter or hiring manager, you have the opportunity to be part of a solution to this problem and help yourself at the same time.  As Peter pointed out…“Tens of millions of decent, dedicated and capable people—men and women who have successfully worked their entire lives—are now unemployed, unsuccessful in their search for a new job and unable to figure out why.”

It only makes sense that some of these capable, experienced, and dedicated people could be a fit on your team.  Combine this with the previously discussed trend of independent contractor / full commission hiring becoming more common, and the pool of potential candidates may be much larger than you envision.

How do you connect with these candidates?  That’s a difficult question.  But, it is one we have addressed in many WorkPuzzle discussions over the last year.  As you’re tooling around the office waiting for things to pick up after the first of the year, take some time to review some of the topics we’ve covered.

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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.

Trends and Opportunities For 2011: Full Commission Jobs Are Becoming More Common

I hope you’ve wrapped up a wonderful holiday weekend with family and friends.  Assuming that you got everything you wanted for Christmas and you’re not out exploring the after-Christmas sales, you’re probably starting to think about the year ahead.

The job of any leader is to help those on their team to see and understand the business trends and opportunities that will affect their future.  Just as an airline pilot lets his passengers know when he sees turbulence on the radar, it will help your teammates feel more safe and be more productive if you can help them interpret the events going on around them.

We’ll take the next few posts to relay some of the trends and opportunities we see for 2011.  The purpose of these discussions is not to provide an exhaustive list of things that we think will happen in the future, rather it is to help get you in the mode of recognizing how the things going on around you will potentially affect those on your team and your recruiting efforts.

The first topic I’ll address is the future of full commission jobs.  As we mentioned in a WorkPuzzle discussion last summer, there is a lot of economic pressure being put on the traditional “job with benefits.”  At the time, I made the point that more and more companies are moving toward independent contractor employment models.

A recent article in Business Week conveys how this trend is not only continuing, but may be growing in the coming years:

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You can't buy Dallas clothier J. Hilburn's shirts in a retail store or online. Nonetheless, the company expects to sell 60,000 of them this year by dispatching salespeople to customers' homes or offices to take measurements and suggest fabrics and styles.  They send their orders to a factory near Macau, China, where shirts are cut and sewn from Italian fabric. Buyers receive them in two to three weeks and pay between $80 and $150, less than half the price of similar shirts sold in some high-end stores....

Some 30,000 people have bought clothing or accessories from Hilburn, the company says.  And 93 percent of its customers return for a second purchase, says Davis.  Since Hilburn was founded in 2007, its sales have tripled each year and are on track to top $9 million in 2010, driven by growing demand for its shirts as well as newer products such as trousers, cuff links, and cashmere sweaters.  "Customers are basically saying, 'You've become my solution, now offer me more products,' " says Davis, 38.

While new customers can find sales reps through Hilburn's website, most come through referrals.  The company has 650 "style advisers" who earn commissions of up to 25 percent on clothing they sell after paying $399 for fabric samples, sales materials, and training...

Amy Mancini started selling Hilburn shirts in 2008.  A mother of three in West Boylston, Mass., the former nurse says she earns about $60,000 annually, spending between 20 and 25 hours a week managing other reps and visiting customers.  "I have clients anywhere from college students all the way up to presidents and CEOs," she says.  The sales calls are crucial to getting measurements right and making customers feel comfortable about buying a garment they can't try on.  Clients' measurements are stored in a database, and the company plans to launch an online store next year where customers can order new shirts once they've been fitted….

The model removes some traditional up-front costs of retailing.  "You've got a sales force you're not paying until they sell things.  You're not paying to make the shirt until the shirt is sold," says Brian O'Malley, a Hilburn board member and partner at Battery Ventures.

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Notice the last statement in the article... Isn’t this what the real estate industry has been saying for several decades?  Of course, it is.  What’s changing is that traditional industries, such as retail, are starting to use the same methodologies.

If you’re trying to attract talent into the real estate industry, this is exciting stuff.  It is always difficult to get someone to consider something new.  But when the value proposition is completely different (full commission) than what most people are used to, the jump can seem insurmountable.  As the independent contractor becomes more common, the gap in someone’s perception of what’s “normal” is diminished.  This should make the recruiting process easier.

The potential downside of this trend is that it may force you to compete with other businesses who will be continually trying to perfect the independent contractor employment model.  If someone can earn $60K working 20 hours per week measuring people for shirts, you may have to sharpen your value proposition in order to compete when it comes to recruiting.

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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.

Why Metrics Matter...

I realize that my last entry was fairly, well... adamant to say the least.  As you probably already know, we write and speak on the importance of metrics frequently (as I emphatically did earlier this week).  Everything that we do and ask you to do hinges on this principle.

We are certainly not alone.  For example, Tom Malone said, “If you don’t keep score, you are only practicing.”  Emery Powell noted that, “A strategy without metrics is just a wish.  And metrics that are not aligned with strategic objectives are a waste of time.”  Finally, some unknown but very wise manager once said, “Be careful what you measure—you might just get it.” 

By measuring something, you are stating to your employees, managers, stakeholders, and industry analysts that an activity is important.

Steven A. Melnyk, of the Department of Marketing & Supply Chain Management at Michigan State University, sums up as succinctly as I have seen, why metrics are so important:

“Metrics are important because of the functions that they provide, namely:
 
Control: Metrics enable superiors to control and evaluate the performance of the people working under them.  They also enable employees to control their own performance.

Reporting: This is the most commonly identified function of metrics.  We use metrics to report performance to ourselves, our superiors, and external agencies.
 
Communication: This is a critical but over-looked function of a metric.  We use metrics to tell people both internally and externally what constitutes value and what the key success factors are.  As pointed out previously, people don’t understand value, but they understand metrics.  As a result, value as implemented at the firm should influence the type of metrics developed.
 
Opportunities for Improvement: Metrics identify gaps (between performance and the expectation).  Intervention takes place when we have to close undesired gaps.  The size of then gap, the nature of the gap (whether it is positive or negative) and the importance of the activity determine the need for management to resolve these gaps.
 
Expectations: Metrics frame expectations both internally (with our personnel) and externally (with our customers).  Metrics help form what the customer expects."

Melnyk also discusses various categories of metrics.  For our purposes, let's take a look at predictive metrics.

“Predictive (also referred to as a process metric) is one that we can use to help predict our chances of achieving a certain objective or goal.  In many systems, the bulk of metrics are outcome-oriented, rather than predictive.  As a result, the measure system gives the managers little information on which they can predict their chances of meeting their objectives.  However, firms such as Texas Instruments are now turning their attention to the development of predictive metrics.  They recognize that such measures are far more useful to the users.”

It is the predictive metric that provides us the opportunity to track our clients' outcome metrics, such as number of candidates, number of interviews, and total hires over time, and then quickly convert these to provide a forecast of what you can expect to achieve with your recruitment efforts.

What else can we all measure collectively?  How can we measure it?  What behaviors should we track?  How can you use metrics with your agents?  What should they be measuring and tracking?  What happens if they don't measure?

Because …

“A strategy without metrics is just a wish.” 

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Editor's Note:  This article was written by Dr. David Mashburn.  Dave is a Clinical and Consulting Psychologist, a Partner at 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.

Why Discipline in Recruiting Matters

You've all heard the saying "If it were easy, everyone would do it."

Ben wrote a great piece on the difference between microwave and crock pot recruiting that gets to the heart of the above principle. 

Every tool and philosophy we espouse at Tidemark is built upon this central principle.  I'm not surprised to say that 95% of our clients hold to this principle as well.  They have an underlying conviction that in order to see results tomorrow, they must engage in constant, systematic, and seamless steps today.  It's understood that "microwave" recruiting will only result in producing low hanging fruit that competitors are also vying for; And conversely that "crock pot" recruiting, may take more time and discipline, but over time yields the higher caliber and supplemental fruit that companies need to beat the competition.

The difference in conversation content between a microwave recruiter and a crock pot recruiter resembles two entirely different languages.  A microwave recruiter offers every anecdotal excuse under the sun, with no metrics to back it up.  In fact, metrics are absent from the language of the microwave recruiter altogether.  If you ask them a metric question, they give you another anecdotal answer.  Ask them how many candidates it takes to get ten interviews...or how many interviews it takes to get each hire, and then give them a week to come up with this information.  What do they provide?  More excuses.  Why?  Because they don't track it.  We all know that what isn't measured cannot be managed, predicted, and improved upon.

Now, don't get me wrong...there are always factors that change those percentages and numbers from one cycle to the next.  We're all aware that there is a time and place to dissect reasons to interpret the changes in percentages around the metrics.  But, excuses with no grounding in metrics amount to sheer laziness and avoidance of accountability.

Discipline is really the key to all of this.  Disciplined people and organizations rarely offer excuses.  They implement systems to drive, track and improve performance.

Read carefully the definition of Discipline:

1. Training expected to produce a specific character or pattern of behavior.
2. Controlled behavior resulting from training.
3. A set of rules or methods.
4. Activity, exercise, or a regimen that develops or improves a skill.
5. Behavior in accord with rules of conduct; behavior and order maintained by training and control.
6. A set or system of rules and regulations.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a four-part piece on an expert recruiter (Andy Nazaroff) who clearly exercises discipline (1,2,3,4).  He provides specifics regarding calls, interviews, information, timing, conduct, etc...and all of these methods amount to consistent and impressive success.

Why am I excited about the discipline that so many of our clients practice, and frustrated with the opposite?  It comes down to a belief system.  We believe that measuring discipline drives results, and increases responsibility -- two characteristics of every successful company.

Let me know your thoughts and your own methods for assuring your own discipline.

In an upcoming article, I hope to feature a manager who is disciplined in working the experienced agent pipeline... 

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Editor's Note:  This article was written by Dr. David Mashburn.  Dave is a Clinical and Consulting Psychologist, a Partner at 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.

Have You Experienced TED? Great Ideas in 18 Minutes or Less

Where do you go to get great ideas?  I like to read...and I tend to best assimilate knowledge this way.  I know not everyone has this capacity or interest—some of you are more visual and auditory.  If you’re in this latter group of learners, you might want to spend some time on TED.

TED (an abbreviation for Technology, Entertainment, Design) is a nonprofit organization that began in 1984 with the purpose of spreading great ideas.  For years, they’ve hosted annual conferences, and in 2007 they launched a video-enabled website that has become quite popular.

The premise of TED is to challenge the finest thought leaders in the world to give the best talk of their life…in 18 minutes or less.  The speeches are traditionally given at one of two live conferences held each year (one in Long Beach, CA and one in Oxford).  Although, it appears that TED has recently started adding more conferences as their popularity has grown.

Here is a speech that you may want to digest if you’re a recruiter or a hiring manager who wants to become better at engaging the most talented individuals:

 

In this talk, author and consultant, Simon Sinek explains how great leaders have inspired great causes—both throughout history and even in modern day life. They do so by reversing the normal order of discovery, focusing first and most passionately on the question “Why?”  Most people focus their effort on the questions “What?” and “How?” and never get to the most important question.

This oversight is very common in real estate recruiting, and it’s one of the main reasons that so few candidates are inspired to action after an interview.  I don’t want to say any more at the risk of stealing Simon’s thunder, but let me assure you if you can master this technique and apply it to your candidate interactions, your effectiveness will skyrocket.  Enjoy!

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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.