This week we interviewed Stephen Collins, founder of acidlabs and thought leader in the field of helping organizations to communicate and collaborate more effectively. “Stephen works with a range of organisations in the public and private sectors helping them change old corporate culture into a new model – one where people, where conversation, collaboration and community are at the heart of everything they do.”
In the interview Stephen shares his views on where organizations are at when it comes to social media and talent attraction and retention. He discusses how the recruitment process can evolve to help organizations identify and attract ‘rock stars’ and what he believes to be the trends in HR and Recruitment.
1. The essence of your work is around user experience, collaboration and community, whereby you work with organizations translating these three principles into areas of their business such as strategy, corporate change, mentoring, knowledge management etc. When it comes to talent attraction and retention, what are the trends you are seeing and/or developing for organizations around user experience, collaboration and community? Or are we at a point where many organizations are still learning about these principles and experimenting or applying them internally, before addressing the external market?
In many cases, the things I bring to a client are very new to their organisations.
They understand the general concepts of things like user experience design, real and effective collaboration, knowledge workers, but they aren’t certain how to go about incorporating these things into the way they do business. Often, that’s where I come in – no matter what type of engagement I’m on, I am always cognisant of what I consider the need for a strategic approach to these disciplines. I make an effort both to educate clients on strategic approaches to things like user experience and to ensure that once I finish the engagement that someone on client staff has been left with enough awareness and expertise to handle at least low level issues I’ve been there to solve.
As for talent and retention, particularly with respect to collaboration and community, I believe that organisations should be making an effort to ensure that people that they hire are capable of participation in and understanding what these things mean for business. These days, we’re all public representatives of the businesses we work for – a business and its people that don’t understand this or participate are setting themselves up for big problems.
As representatives of both the brand or our organisations and, if we’re participating actively in our communities, our personal brands, we all need – organisations and people – to develop and be aware of a greater level of emotional intelligence in order to manage the inevitable attention that brings from within our organisations and from our communities.
2. Stephen, your work embraces social networks and technology and looks to bring tools to organizations that will foster innovation and collaboration. I can only imagine the challenges that come with this, as no doubt many business leaders in theory understand they need to embrace new technology, to collaborate and innovate, yet it stops here. What case studies or examples can you share with us where organizations are embracing innovation and collaboration, and in what areas of their business is this occurring?
More and more businesses are adopting some form of social technology and the (more important) business culture changes that come along with using these tools. It’s a massive learning curve for many organisations and it’s my job to help them ride that curve successfully.
I’ve worked with several organisations now on building this capability. They’ve been in the public and private sectors and the work has been largely successful. But, like any big change in business, it’s non-trivial and requires real buy-in from management and staff and also requires a long term, strategic view. Most of my engagements that are centered on this type of work are three to six months at several days a week as we focus on building competence and familiarity over time as well as a degree of skills transfer into the organisations I’m working with.
3. When it comes to talent attraction, many leading thinkers in the HR and talent space acknowledge that the current recruitment model is outdated and perhaps only passable for recruiting high volume transactional roles. Stating the obvious, the rate of change at work is monumental, with new functions, occupations and industries emerging that did not exist a few years ago; and this will only continue.
Therefore the current hiring practice of hiring someone who has done the same job before (which is already fundamentally flawed) will be irrelevant. In your view, how can organizations utilize online collaboration and communities more effectively to engage with and source talent for both existing and emerging jobs? Do you also have any examples of where this is being done well?
I think recruiting as a practice has been broken in a lot of ways for a long time. And well before the smart recruiters started thinking about social recruiting. I’ve been involved in the recruitment process from both sides, and made or perpetuated many of these mistakes myself.
I think the formal job interview is possibly the least effective way of screening someone for a job. And for technical roles of any sort, the in-interview technical test is simply useless – you can’t prepare for that sort of thing and it doesn’t represent the real world.
As for the practices of many professional recruiters, the current model is badly skewed to a focus where keywords in databases are the apparent primary trigger for a call from recruiter to candidate. It was only recently that I had a call from a recruiter who was still working from a CV and keywords about me they had found from five years ago. It was completely irrelevant. Yet, if that recruiter had taken five minutes and looked me up on Google or LinkedIn, they’d have an immediate and up to date look into my work, my clients, my public speaking and the endorsements I have from past clients.
The current model for many recruiters – and it’s not all of them, let’s be clear about that – is lazy. It doesn’t encourage them to build a relationship with their candidate base, nor their clients. It focuses far too much on the transaction – of getting someone in somewhere – rather than a long-term relationship that might mean a better understanding of both candidate and client. That’s something that needs to change.
Here’s another thing – I don’t actually keep a CV anymore. My CV, such as it is, is my profile at LinkedIn. There is nothing else. Recruiters and clients seem to struggle with that when I tell them. They want a Word document. And that’s mostly because the software they use can parse that, not for any other reason.
There are a few companies who are using newer models – team conversations, informal chats, on site interactions and the like to screen candidates. They’re also looking for evidence of candidate status within their communities of expertise – blogging, conference speaking, contributions. I think that’s a really worthwhile model because it lets you discover whether the people you’re trying to attract are the rock stars or just cruising. I want rock stars – people who are engaged and dedicated to whatever it is they do, but that also have a real life.
I certainly don’t think I have all the answers on how to fix talent attraction, but I do have some ideas. The biggest one – focus on people and relationships over time, not transactions.
4. What has been the best advice you have received during your career and/or the lessons learned?
I once had a manager of mine say to me, “You’re a smart guy, but the ideas you’re trying to make work here mean you just don’t fit. You need to decide whether you have a career here and are going to fit in.”
What’s the lesson from that? The lesson is that the answer to something like that is “Hell, no!” To do great work, to contribute most value and to be satisfied in yourself, you need to do what you’re passionate about. Organisations where fitting in and toeing the line is they modus operandi do nothing but stifle individuality and innovation.
5. You are clearly very knowledgeable and passionate about conversation, collaboration and community, as is the acidlabs tag line. What are the emerging trends that you see in this space that will have the most impact on talent attraction and retention for organizations?
As I said above, more organisation are moving to a recruiting model where online and offline social engagement, particularly individual brand and reputation, are becoming key factors in considering candidates. Some are even going after passive candidates based on studying their involvement in communities of expertise and using that as the basis of beginning a recruiting activity.
I think that’s a smart model. Why not try to attract the rock stars?
Equally, organisations need profile. I don’t want to work for an organisation where all the staff are anonymous and I can’t tell what they are doing – personally and professionally. I want to work for an organisation that’s out thers – involved and doing great work. And doing it with great people.
Dream? I don’t think so.
6. What pieces of advice do you offer HR and Recruitment Departments, and business leaders on the topic of social media and networking?
Give up on the fear of social networking and work on understanding it in the context of your business.
Make an effort to build understanding and *listen* to your customers, clients and staff. Learn what’s being said about you online and get involved in that conversation in order to build trust around your people and your organisation – just jumping in during crises makes you look foolish. Empower your people to get involved in everything as we’re all representatives of our organisations – the PR and Marketing department is too small and is now getting bypassed by smart people who know where to turn to. Make *everyone* a part of marketing and PR.
Learn and then *do*. It’s too easy to point out the size of the chasm instead of figuring out what you need for the bridge over it.
To find out more about Stephen Collins and his services, visit acidlabs
Stephen will also be presenting at RecruiTECH in Canberra on Friday 18th September 2009.
