Selfish Recruiters - what's wrong with that? Ask the CFO if he cares.

"It depends on having the right people on board" - we hear that all the time on the industry. People often quote Jack Welsh of GE and how made HR an executive priority. However what most people overlook is that Welsh also critically understood that he had to get the best Recruiters and HR professionals on board.

Every country a new GE business entered, they would go out to find the best Compensation & Benefits person in the field. Cisco's approach to get great results was to make every employee think like a recruiter, and to contribute to the company recruiting efforts.

How do you get a sales man to focus on the kind of sales that are good for the firm, and not only what's best for his/her pocket? It's very hard, especially in large organisations, however there are three obvious things that most firms do:

1. Talk endlessly about the company mission, strategic direction etc
2. Incentives - top sales people are linked to company performance, often with KPI's, and these affect their own earnings potential.
3. Hire the right people into the role

Here's my point. The above simply does not happen in the Recruitment Department, well all too rarely anyhow.

90% of the time, business unit Recruiters are only concerned with their own workload and making things as easy as possible
for themselves. They have little care or understanding of corporate recruiting objectives, and often counter what is for the good of the company.

I'm talking about simple things such as sharing talented CV's, recording recruiting costs, or submitting evaluation sheets so that colleagues can see interview notes in the future. Imagine the reaction of a CFO if he found out that an accountant was not declaring cost of sales -- the auditors would go crazy, it could even affect share price if it was deemed to have hidden information on performance.

This practice has to change in order for national employers to become successful recruiters. I believe that it is this attitude that is driving (and hindering at the same time) the move to Centralised recruitment departments.

It is a bit of a Catch 22. Large employers need to be able to report and measure their recruiting activities in order to improve, and they need individual recruiters across the organisation to use centralised tools to help improve recruiting on an enterprise-wide or strategic level. Again though it's often those same individual recruiters who have no genuine interest in 'Group' views or goals for recruiting.

Therefore to ensure and meet quality targets, there seems to be no choice but to centralise recruiting, or at least manage recruiters against SLA/KPI's. Certainly I think corporate recruiters should be rewarded against their performance (as you do for Agencies), and the performance of the company on a whole.

Technology of course makes all this possible and easier to measure, but that isn't really the point of my rant here. I just continue to be amazed by recruiters in large organisations who has such a myopic vision, little ambition, and no consideration towards corporate objectives. More troublesome is that this is allowed to take place without complaint.
Executives in the Middle East, until now, have preferred to ignore that their business leaders often don't want to work with internal recruitment functions, and would rather pay through the nose for external support when hiring. Now though with unprecedented growth, escalating hiring costs, high turnover and limited talent supply; the tides may be about to change and we may see CEO's taken a keen interest in 'Corporate Recruitment Performance.

Above is an example of a cost analysis report that an HR Director now runs every quarter and discusses with the Board of one of my clients in Kuwait. This only started in 2006.

It's drill down report so if they see anything that looks incorrect, they can mine down into fine details and work out exactly where the recruitment budgets are going and if they're getting value for money. In this Telco client at least we have seen a mindset change in the recruitment department now that they know the CFO are analysing their activities.
Long may it continue I say, as it seems to be finally driving a quality and corporate consciousness into recruitment, which was sadly lacking before.

Which countries work when it comes to Internet recruiting and Sourcing candidates?

Well many of them of course, and often different sourcing areas are better depending on which skill sets you're looking for.

Never the less we were doing some analysis last week on this topic and the results were quite interesting and worth sharing I thought.

Below are two images, firstly is a specific campaign run by a client based in Dubai, and where there candidates came from.

Then below there is a pie chart on which countries are the best performing markets (outside of the region itself) for generating online candidates. :

How to make Email add value to Recruitment?!

For many recruiters still using email addresses to receive CV's, email is your worst nightmare I'm quite sure. But it needn't be useless. There are many really cool ways email can be very helpful; and here's just two ways that are easily set up if you have a candidate management system in place:

1. Systemised Emails to Deliver Candidate Vouchers
Initaitives are always worth talking about, and this isn't revolutionary but still very underutilised in the realm of employer branding. Basically every time you complete an interview, you set the system up to send a thank you letter/email to the candidate. With it you include a voucher for them to redeem against your products. It could be 20% off a cup of coffee or CD (depending on what you sell). The options are limitless and costs next to nothing to put into place. What's the point of this? Well you can imagine the impression you'd have if after your last interview you received a free cinema ticket, or a bottle of wine for you and your partner when you next go to dinner. It would be positive right? Regardless of if you get the job offer next week, or they tell you that you've missed out on the job - you're going to think they're a great company. You may not even spend the voucher, but you'll tell people to think about applying to them. We've done this for retail and hotel clients, but there is no reason most employers couldn't do this. The mareketing department would love recruitment for it (there's a first!) and you'd be creating customers for the company whilst making candidate attraction easier for yourselves.

2. Recruiter EMail Footers to Carry Hotjobs
This can be done whether or not you have a hiring platform in place or not, it can just be automated and more usuful if you're lucky enough to have one. Get all recruiters or even HR staff to update there email auto signatures to include the 3 'hot jobs' of the moment. This free marketing tool will generate awareness and free candidates. It may even cause employees to be aware of those hard-to-fill jobs and refer you fresh candidates.

RSS for Recruitment Staff Knowledge

We're implementing a massive retail talent management platform for a client currently, and the project champion told us this week how his recruiters across many countries are relying on RSS feeds to keep them up to date with news from around the recruitment/jobs/jobseeker world that is the Internet. I'm not sure how many others are doing this but I thought I'd scribe about it here briefly.

What is RSS, well it stands for Really Simple Syndication; and is an easy automated way of having content sourced from across the Internet for you without having to go and find it yourself. Imagine you like to check the weather each morning in Glasgow (it's raining I can tell you!), and like me you check the sports news or your share values. Well through RSS you can set up a page, think of it as your own private homepage on the Internet, and all those items of interest will be brought into your page for you. It only brings you news when their is latest news to show you, so it saves you going to a site if there's no need.

Back to the recruitment scenario. So as a recruiter you can set up RSS feeds for your business concerns, senior appointments, new jobsites opening up, legislation & staff tribunal cases, salary data, exchange rates, housing prices; and of course the sport!

Quite a nice way of keeping up to speed as a recruiter. Speak to your IT dept/Portal Managers and see if they can help you set something up, it's extremely simple and many RSS readers are free.

'War for Talent' Banking Conference - my thoughts

Well I went to the 'War for Talent' in Banking Conference a fortnight back, and I wasn't really given the impression that the audience were in battle mode. It was quite disappointing from that perspective. I had hoped HR staffers would be there talking about how they were finding advantages over each other, and who was leading the field; but nobody seemed to be using any tools or techniques worth a mention. I spoke individually to a number of senior recruiters and HR generalists to ask privately what challenges they were facing and how they were reacting....nothing, nobody home.

Shocking really, and I only hope that the Executives of those banks represented are aware at the lack of action being taken, or that there are actually steps being taken to be competitive but that nobody wanted to share their ideas. There were no stand-out employers except HSBC maybe who at least seemed to be going to good efforts to implement locally some of the international retention strategies in the local set up. Even these efforts though seemed to be limited to Opinion Surveys, Exit Interviews and Employee of the Month Awards for staff recognition.

It struck me that the HR Banking community doesn't fully understand yet how difficult it has got to hire great talent in the Middle East markets. Part of the problem I think is that Bankers, not unlike Hoteliers, see banking as something that runs through your blood. Therefore so long as you're a good bank, then you'll attract good bankers (as they won't want to work anywhere other than a bank). The finance markets are changing very quickly across the MENA region as they have in Asia; and corporate recruiters need to see it. There is a diversifying pool of jobs for bankers now more than ever; stock markets being born, Islamic Banking on a meteoric rise, corporate and infrastructure financing and IPO's abound. Banks need to start implementing tools and techniques that the rest of industry has been doing for a couple of years. General employer branding (wider than just targeting bankers) and targeted selection to develop talent pools in key skill areas. Using the Internet to develop relationships ahead of time with that talent.

Banking is so regulated and every risk has to be mitigated; hence training & development is always a mandatory measure.To compound this issue further for banks, is the very fact that have invested in Training so heavily (also as a retention tool) they are a good target for highly developed staff - which others will continue to feed off.

As banks in the region outsource and offshore more of the back-office functions, I foresee a huge crunch in talent shortages in the retained core banking areas; and very few employers in this sector are prepared for this.

Jobsite Fraud - be careful out there!

I noticed there is a conference being held in London's Cafe Royal this quarter, where some of the leading jobsites (fish4 group for example) are gathering to discuss online fraud that occurs on jobsites. See www.onrec.com for details.

This of course happens in developing markets also, but it is little talked about and we have some local examples that you should be wary of.

So what kind of online fraud would happen on a jobsite or in recruitment in general?
Well it's simply about exploiting a situation, usually to extract cash from someone.

I had an airline client who was using an agency in Kazakhstan to interview customer service staff before they would be offered and flown into the Middle East to start work. The staff turned up to work with their uniforms already; which was a first for the training department who usually issue them. Turns out the agent had provided them at a cost of $500 to each
candidate. Most corporate recruiters are used to agency fraud though and have learned how to deal with it.

A client in Kuwait was telling me last week how he learned that joinees were having to pay back a fee to the agents from their first two months wages.
He made all the staff sign a paper that they had been scammed, and for how much. He then made the agent fly into Kuwait with a bag of cash, and go down a line of staff to hand them back the amount they had paid each.

Online fraud is usually attempted on a big scale, and it happened recently to one of the most successful jobsites based out of Dubai.

An agency in Nigeria advertised a position for a GM based in Nigeria. Hundreds applied, and 400 were individually told that they had been selected (after a phone interview and several email communications). The 400 were then asked to transfer $1,500 (each) to the agency which would be used for visa purposes and reimbursed by the employer once they arrived into the country.

Now I don't know how many unfortunate jobseekers made the transfer; but that's a $600K fraud! And this is just one job opening, from one agency on one site this year. The implications for jobseekers and employers are frightening.

So, how do you prevent this sort of thing happening? Well only the established jobsites can really have the resources to have preventative measures in place. You should ask your jobsites what lengths they go to in validating that all the employers and agencies using their site are legitimate.

It matters to you because once a site gets a reputation for this happening, jobseekers will not trust the site. Imagine you see an ad for a 20-30 year old cabin crew role; and your first thought has to be to check out if it's safe to apply? Imagine being offered a job that ends up costing you $1,500.

Of course most people responsible in recruitment departments for paying for adverts/jobsites know now that they should only use SSL protected or 'secure' sites with decent online payment gateways in place. But finding out if the site has a good reputation amongst jobseekers is a much harder task and one that could have a large impact on eRecruitment right across Asia,
ME & Africa.

Next generation candidates - Jobseeker 2.0

There is a massive change in how jobseekers are going to be using the Internet to research and find their next few jobs, so I thought I'd share a few thoughts on how that is happening. It is natural that following "Web 2.0", should follow "Jobseeker 2.0" (note: 'Jobseeker 2.0' - you heard it here first ;)


The volume of content is amazing that is available on the Internet is enormous, and growing at a staggering rate. There were 20,000 blogs in 2002, and there are 58 million today. The growth rate is one per second worldwide, with the largest number of new blogs currently being created in Chinese I believe - so please don't disregard this as an American thing. This will affect how you hire in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, I promise you.

Candidates are going to start connecting more with people than companies. Web 1.0 was all about gaining access with a company (from a candidates perspective). Now 2.0 jobseekers are social animals and they will trust a companies employees who are writing on a blog far more than they would buy into the corporate spin. They are busy on the Net looking for new ways to find people, contacts, careers. The corporate spin is still VERY important and dedicated careers portals will continue to grow - however they will also have to learn how to cater to Candidate 2.0
That might mean having employees post to a blog on your careers site for example and include video diaries.

On a side not I was watching an episode of 'Sex and the City' last night, and heard a comment that every person in New York is believed to "always be looking for either a new apartment, and new partner or a new job". How true is that, and does it apply to other major capital centres I don't know; maybe Carrie Bradshaw could holiday in Dubai and carry out some research.

Web 2.0 is all about how easy it has become to publish diverse content, to the Internet. It was always fairly easy for a large firm to get a web design company to build and host a corporate website (web 1.0), but now you and I can write blogs, use social networking sites, upload videos to myspace or youtube.com, or broadcast interviews via pod casts. That has all really all taken place in a very short space of time, and I expect to see an awful lot more of it well through 2007 as more people gain confidence to try out their Internet skills.

However jobseekers are already there, well in the game.

2.0 jobseekers have realised that uploading your CV to Yahoo is no longer that clever, and they will seek out information and contacts for their next job/s this year using a wide variety of tools.

Credibility is being built today by individuals. Search for 'Microsoft blogs' on Google, there are hundreds of MS staff talking about a huge range of things from the work environment, to the pay, to their hobbies and exercise routines. It isn't all about blogs though, far from it. Jobseeker 2.0's are starting to use social networking sites such as linkedin.com, myspace, and recruiting sites are embracing this technology such as jobster and theladders.com to become more than just a website advertising jobs.

The companies that are willing to embrace Web 2.0 will see a win-win with Jobseeker 2.0's. They will be able to connect with great potential hires, who have a good insight into the company and its people before they even apply. That accessibility is essential and ignoring it, or not understanding it, is a recruiting faux-pas for employers today.

eRecruitment on Suppliers: Survival of the Fittest

Having had a great family Christmas break back to the UK, I have found no end of recruiting technology topics to blog about first in 07. That's partly from having cleared my head on holiday, but to be fair a client also inspired me when he asked this week about what 'risks' they should expect from recruitment firms by introducing a web recruitment software package.

Naturally I am involved in implementing a number of ATS packages into large corporates at any given time. A current project is into the largest retailer in the Middle East of the Sniperhire ATS Corporate Edition version 5.2.

So the Corporate HR Director asks a great question on this conference call and we get into a four way discussion about what kind of push back to expect from trusted recruitment firms, and how do intend to handle that. Now any company introducing eRecruitment technology wll face resistance to change from within, more from HR and Line Managers than from Recruitment staff; but recruitment suppliers can be a world unto themselves. Fortunately now the majority of established recruitment firms have had to start using one product or another for their largest customers.

Suppliers are critical when hiring markets are tough, and in developing markets they are always tough so nobody wants to upest their recruitment suppliers unduly.

One of the first things to mention here is that agencies around the world are now depending heavily on the web themselves to source candidates, which they then interview, repackage and send over email to the client and charge $?,000's for. So if the suppliers can themselves use the Net to find candidates, it shouldn't be a big ask to ask them to submit the same CV's to you (their clients) over the Net also. The only loser in that equation is the email tool, not the supplier.

The next thing we discussed is that as corporate employers introduce and manage their PSL (preferred suppliers list) of recruitment firms, they need to be able to understand (read: Report) on the performance of those supplied services to be able to decide which firms to reward best (read: give more work to). So really the corporate employers facing this challenge
should consider their communications plans carefully for the PSL members, and openly encourage that they support the corporate efforts to manage their recruitment supply chain better and streamline their operations by using eRec technology.

I read an article on workforce.com today and the MD of Stallion Security in South Africa was talking about hwo hard it is to find decent recruitment suppliers. That is one of the great reasons that corporate employers force their agencies onto ATS systems because they can then work out which firms are worth working closely with, and which ones to cut relations with.
"It took us a long time to find the right agencies," Zullberg says. "Most of them just want to pump out CVs to you and don’t want to work with companies that use behavioral assessments or other complex tools for evaluating candidates."

There are other benefits for recruitment suppliers in using ATS technology to submit their CV into also, for example they can receive instant feedback once the client has reviewed or made a decision on a candidate, they can get alerts when interviews are scheduled or offers are issued.

Suppliers can also be informed when they are proposing a candidate that the client already has in their database, rather than waste time only to find out that the candidate was considered by the client previously. That transparency and collaborate approach can help the supplier work smarter and save themselves time, and therefore make their fees faster.

The biggest fear that recruitment suppliers have when it comes to their clients forcing them to use the ATS platform, is that it will lead to them being given less briefs, and make less money; but that simply isn't valid. If a recruitment supplier is skilled in sourcing and providing the best CV's, and they can evaluate them better/faster than the employer, then they will continue to win business.

Certainly the employers introducing recruiting technology do become better themselves at sourcing and managing candidates, so to some extent they will be reduce their supplier dependency - but the fittest will survive. Are clients under pressure to watch costs, absolutely, but that's only right and also only because they're spending more than ever on talent.

Bottom line is that it is well worth the risk for all parties, and if a supplier cannot supply a service at a higher level than the client can themselves, then yes they will lose business, but good suppliers will remain.

Happy new year and happy recruiting by the way, hope you have a great one.

We're Hiring

No pun intended in this title - my firm are actually looking for a few eRecruitment Gurus and I thought it would be silly not to mention it here on my blog.

I am always keen to hear from people in the ercruitment technology industry so if you've got industry experience and fancy a challenging role based in Dubai then contact me at work on:

ben DOT fawcett AT thscompany DOT com

The link for the jobs is as follows:

http://hsc.sniperhire.net

We're looking to hire people in marketing, sales, technology and customer support. Aside from the technology roles (which are getting much harder to hire by the way) you have to have experience in corporate recruitment (client side) or with another eRecruitment provider.

Dr Lien's Talent Management Conundrum

I attended an interesting lecture last night at the University of Wollongong in Dubai. Their Associate Professor in Human Resources Management, Dr Lien Els, gave a great presentation debating what is 'talent', and how do you harness it.

One of her great points I thought was that you should not plan to keep talent. You can't keep or restrain talent. Talent moves on or leaves. You should plan how you intend to retain talent as long as possible and that all comes down to what you'll let them do whilst they're with your firm. To retain talent, she argued, the role should be wide open and not a tightly defined job description. Talent needs to feel as though they are constantly growing, or at least have the room to grow into at all times.

Another good observation in my opinion was that most HR professionals tend to think of talent management primarily as sourcing/recruitment, and as a result of that, it is easy to neglect the talent that may already exist within an organisation.

All quite heady stuff. If you want to know more about their research events then see the following link: http://www.uowdubai.ac.ae/research/

Job site Search Engines
Essential for those looking to quickly find jobseekers via the Net. However I have a small gripe this week with a couple of job sites who have overlooked the basic model of a search engine. You have to be able to find something using it!

Sounds simple, and it is for the majority. However a client asked us to integrate our recruiting technology this week to a new South African job site which has lots of IT jobs on it and is popular. Now if you visit the site and search 'all' vacancies, which I would think 2 out of 5 visitors would do when they reach the homepage, the search doesn't work. At best it retrieves a dozen jobs; when there are actually hundreds posted.

This isn't the only site who has not yet made a brilliant job of making job searching easy. I don't know whether in this case the site have put a restriction on the site because their servers can't handle retrieving hundreds of records at a time, but either way I think job sites should be audited by an independent body to make sure that employer advertising bucks are being spent in places that will actually yield candidates for them.

Chief Talent Sourcer?

I must admit I had been struggling to chose a topic to post about this week. Not that it hasn't been a busy period, just nothing inspirational to go on about here.

However, after several meetings with clients from all different sectors, I realised that hardly anybody gets the whole talent pooling/sourcing thing.

You may have read in an earlier post when I talked about receiving an email from Electronic Arts asking me to apply or refer games software engineers to them. The mail came from a lady in the US whose job title was Senior Talent Resourcer. I'll come back to that in a second.

In every single meeting I attended this week in Dubai, I heard the same cry - "we've just lost a key recruiting resource, and we can't find a replacement - do you know anyone?"

Well it's easy to say and hard to do, but it's too late because they've left already and now you're hurting. People leave firms, that can't be avoided entirely. But given that we know that to be true, it suprises me that no companies are identifying replacements before staff resign.

The point of developing a talent pool is to create a pipeline of qualified, interested, screened potential hires. All that recruiting technolgy has done is made that all far more possible.

I think Recruitment departments, especially in growing competitive markets/times should consider having a separate person or team, who doesn't hire against open vacancies, but rather develops pools of potential hires who can be interviewed and offered jobs within 3-5 days of a resignation.

Your Chief Talent Sourcer or Scouts should have their own marketing budget, and be able to make use of the corporate recruiting technology, they should perhaps have their own special area on the careers portal. They need to have some tools and skills to communicate individually and en-masse to groups of target hires. They need to predict where it will hurt the company most if people leave - and build relationships with potential replacements on a daily basis.

Think about it, okay you've still got notice periods and bedding-in periods, but the Talent Scout could save millions of dollars each year in lost revenue, speed up time to market from R&D, retained customers, etc.

The time to hire or gap between hires is extremely costly, but still companies only (manpower) plan and have strategies/suppliers in place to fill new hire roles.

The way the web is used to communicate and the tools available to find and meet qualified professionals out there on the Net - I think this key hiring role is going to become a must for major employers across the Middle East markets today.

If any of you are in a pre-emptive talent sourcing role then perhaps you could share a few tricks that you use with us here on my blog..

Ben.

Changes to my blog

Those of you who've tuned into my new blog before will have already noticed the new design - hope you approve and find it easier to use. I had been asked to play around with the html by a couple of people, so here you go..

Another change I'm looking into is having a few guest writers posting to my blog from time to time, so that we can get a broader view of eRecruitment technology and activities from around the region. Once I've worked out which way to go on this, and how to go about it, I'll let you know what to expect.

Ben,

What War for Talent?

Over used around the world, the term 'war for talent' is mostly used to describe the situation when recruitment teams within a company start to find it difficult to recruit good people. Of course I would tell them to start using the tools available out there to hire smarter, and to leverage the Internet better; and more that below. However, the market in the Middle East
hasn't generally understood what a WAR for talent is really about. It is more competitive today in the region and it is hard to recruit good people; especially as the booming economy means that there are 10 competitors out there searching for the same CV's. But that isn't war, that's just making it harder and longer to find people to work for you.

War has been declared!
Well things have changed now. The front page of the Gulf News this week ran a story describing how a leading investment house in Dubai (Shuaa Capital) lost an entire team of 6 investment executives on the same day. Where they're headed is as yet unknown, but the cost to the company in terms of loss of business, loss of knowledge, and damaged reputation must be immense. All of that, added to the cost and time to replace those people, is serious indeed.

Shareholders, the CEO and the management team will be discussing this in great detail that's for sure. Recruiting at Shuaa is undoubtedly a strategic issue this week. It seems highly likely that the entire team will turn up at work as a new team for a direct competitor, and will start work on building wealth for a new employer.

This was a smart move in many ways, and the practice of team recruiting is not new to the world of finance and technology - it happens every couple of years in financial centres such as London and New York. It happened in the 1980's when Sony, IBM, Lucent and others all wanted smart engineers to design the next supercomputer. It is new though to the Middle East.

When you are competing for something and you really want to win, as in War, you have to have some aggressive strategies. You have to try to hurt your competition whilst helping yourself. Companies relying on old school recruiting strategies are now going to start really feeling the pain, as a few of their competitors have declared war on them.

A local example of note was when I heard that Qatar Airways and Gulf Air were both scheduling interviews within a couple of days of each other in the same city. When they turned up to hold the interviews the hotel staff told them that Emirates had been in two days previously and hired everybody already.
Somehow Emirates got hold of some information about a competitors recruiting plans, and they had the ability to respond very quickly to gain an advantage.

Corporate recruiting in the MENA markets has already got very tough in retail, financial, hospitality and construction sectors - basically anything with an element of service or knowledge. It is now hitting the very specialist roles as there are more opportunities out there for skilled professionals to consider.

So what other aggressive tactics can we expect to see?

Car park canvassing? - Don't be shocked if your competitors recruiters are approaching your staff wherever they hang out or work. If you have people who are in demand, then expect the opposition to approach them.

Blogs & Social Networking sites - the Internet offer so many ways to find and contact people, even if they don't want to be found. Many companies embracing the Internet to recruit staff now are realising just how much potential there is to cut out the third party sourcing agencies and their high placement fees.

Email/letter campaigns/viral networking - I received a chance email from the head of staffing for Electronic Arts (of EA Sports fame if you've ever played a 'Sony PlayStation') just a week ago asking if I wanted to work for them or could refer them any good software engineers. Now they got it wrong as I am not a software engineer, but I did refer them to two people in the games software market. Why, because I have a great feeling about EA as a company, and if I were an engineer I would like to work with them.

Star hiring - this is where a firm hire a key employee from a rival without necessarily having a vacant role for that person. They are worth hiring to add value to your talent pool and to hurt the competition.

Great place to work employer branding - All of my clients in the eRecruitment arena right now are working hard to improve their external careers brand and to attract higher volumes of qualified applicants to their careers portals. The portals we're being asked to design are having to offer high levels of interactivity with jobseekers, and create differentiation for the employer.

If you have any comments to add about aggressive tactics you have seen, or even better - are deploying yourselves, I'd be interested to see your thoughts on this topic.

Regards, Ben F.

Human Capital Conference @ JW Marriott Dubai

Just a quick note about the conference last week. Thank you to the hundred or so HR professionals that participated and made it such an enjoyable couple of days. If you missed it, we had great presentations from FedEx, GE, Microsoft, Motorola and others talking about strategies for success in Human Capital for the MENA region. There were also dozens of 1-on-1 solution provider meetings to see how we could add value in terms of eRecruitment technology, career portals and job-board posting.

Naseba did a great job of running the conference - so a big thank you to them.
If you weren't able to attend, but want to see any of the presentations from the conference then feel free to get in touch.

SAP Portal for MEA

Unlike many of my posts, this is a short blog update. Atos Origin Middle East have just launched the following careers portal to attract fresh SAP skills into the region.

http://careers.atosorigin-me.com/

The site is going to be advertising on worldwide IT job boards so should see a lot of traffic. Good luck with the initiative Atos!

Goldmine Recruitment & Creating jobs for women in Saudi

A couple of weeks back from the week in Saudi, and I'm sat in the airport on the way to Kuwait to run some eRecruitment strategy workshops with a couple of banks. I spent much of this week with an HR leader who has worked with Saudi Aramco (60,000 employee oil major based in the Eastern Province of Saudi). He has spent the last 20 years in human resources with Aramco so knows a thing or two. It was a little suprising to hear just how difficult even this company find it to hire the right experienced hires and to attract national graduates. Aramco is a company that 5 years ago or more, forced all their suppliers to be 'Internet ready' and where possible to make orders, provide documentation and respond to tenders all via the Net. Alarming then that Job Descriptions were not common practice until very recently.

So, what happened at the HR Conference we ran in Riyadh then..? I promised to write about the event so here we go..The attendance and response was pleasing, with around 50 HR Directors gathered in the Sheraton conferecne centre to listen to a great speaker who flew in from Abu Dhabi. Omar is an HR Veteran and shared thoughts and experiences on 360 degree reviews, and tapped his experience of having done this in a company in Abu Dhabi that controls 10% of the worlds oil reserves. It was a 3 year project but the results were impressive and 10 years on it is still clear to see how it continues to improve the business performance and attitudes of employees.

Speaker aside, the rest of the event was about networking and discussing today's hot recruiting topics in Saudi Arabia with dozens of the guys responsible for their companies people management issues. I spoke with a CEO of a mining company who employ over 5,000 people; and after 4 years in the job he was explaining how they still can't get recruitment right. For skilled workforce it takes them an average 18 weeks to recruit, and even then they have to compromise on quality. We discussed the need for his company to have a complete recruiting 'make over' and to create an attractive employment brand. They've played with the hiring process already, but haven't tried anything radically different to attract people differently, or to interact with them in a different way once they've applied. Employer branding is key for them as they are a really interesting career choice and have so much to offer, but nobody knows about it and just thinks of them as a heavy industry minerals producer. True enough, but they're massively profitable, invest heavily in staff, have a massive supply chain and can offer a diversity of experience few companies can match. Here's some of the specifics the CEO liked the sound of and decided to try out at his firm:

Uni Reach out campaign - also known as a 'milk-round', they'll basically go to UNiversities in target locations and schools related to their industry, and have an Exceutive talk to the student body about the company and the kinds of career paths they offer. Success here would be measured by an increase in graduate applications and by the company hiring a better quality of graduate than before.

Interview skills - They're going to reduce the number of people who hold interviews, and train them in how to communicate the company values properly to jobseekers. The company has a high turnover rate, and there's a likelihood that the wrong people are being hired in the first place and that they don't really understand the company before they join - therefore it isn't that shocking that a portion of new hires leave within 6 months.

Induction/Orientation - Linked to the above, we discussed introducing some simple things such as assigning a work colleague to each new hire to help them settle into the company and tackle their concerns. They're also planning to introduce better induction materials to people along with offer letters, so that they can know what to expect. The CEO then suggested that they could create a 1 page "First 30 days" fact sheet which will be given to all new hires once they've signed their offer letters. These files are all going to be made available over the Internet so that overseas candidates can get access to the materials very quickly.

Image Gallery - To let potential hires 'feel' the work environment we discussed that it'd be a great idea to have some web pages describing the work culture, and images to show their offices and manufacturing locations. I can see how a diamond field, a lab technician at work, or a picture of an engineer placing explosives into a hole to blow open a pit wall; could really show jobseekers the opoortunities.

Another interesting topic that sticks in my mind was that of creating work opportunities for females in Saudi Arabia. Jeddah (Western Province of Saudi) has taken the lead in this regard but there is still a long way to go. I still find it strange hosting a conference or presentation in Saudi; where the attendance is great but there is not a single female in the audience. Don't forget this was in the Sheraton hotel, and all the staff helping run the conference, receive guests, run the restaurant - everybody, every conference delegate or hotel employee was male.
I discussed this with an HR Director from a Government authority involved in developing the national labour force for employment. He explained that efforts are being made, and many businesswomen are frustrated with the obstacles they face regarding investments or jobs. Transportation is an obvious problem as women aren't allowed to drive in Saudi Arabia - so getting to work is often prohibitive to applying for a job even if the job was open to female applicants. The Human Resource Development Fund and the National System for Joint Training Program are working hard to remove the barriers, and I'll write about equal opportunities and any major ground made on this topic as and when I hear about significant progress.

My week in Riyadh (and a Dinner with Recruiters)

Well the intention of my blog is to share my views and experiences of recruitment and recruitment technology from the Middle East and surrounding markets - and this week I'm in Saudi Arabia and hope to have some interesting stories to share by Thursday. I arrived last night into Riyadh and am hosting a dinner at the Sheraton which is being attended by dozens of human resource professionals.

For those who have never been to Saudi, it boasts huge natural resources, and not just oil although it does account for 45% of GDP. Here are a few facts about Saudi Arabia with regards to human resources and why recruitment and retention are huge issues in Saudi :

• Saudi boasts a population of 27M, with 5.5M expatriate labour force, and a growing economy. The total workforce is approximately 6.7M.
• The Saudi male unemployment rate is 13%, some estimates range as high 25%. There are no figures available for females.
• Literacy is high and 85% male literacy, 71% female literacy, and females entering the working population is now becoming a more accepted practice.

The response to our dinner has been really positive, and a speaker is flying in to deliver a short presentation on talent management. We're then spending the rest of the evening over dinner to discuss the issues facing corporate recruitment.

Companies are really struggling to compete for talent, and jobsites and how to leverage technology to recruit better and faster, are top of mind for HR.

I remember years ago when the Aramco (the largest oil firm) opened a recruiting office in North America simply to meet and greet potential hires, primarily experienced oil engineers. They were also able to deal with key recruiting suppliers more readily. Now companies have realised that the Internet creates a level playing field; and those same advantages can be realised by having a decent website and some smart recruiters behind it.

I'm really looking forward to the event and will be back at the end of the week with feedback.

Ben,

If you want to read about or attend our Riyadh event tomorrow night, then here's the link:

The Hiring Solutions Company KSA is honored to invite you to a very special Iftar Dinner to be held at the Sheraton Riyadh ...more

Recruiting Brain Drain in Dubai - Evolution or Revolt?

Dubai policy makers introduced a law this year stating that all Human Resource Management roles must be held by a local National within 18 months. The spirit being that private companies must do more to train and develop UAE nationals in the HR field.

Sound in principle, except for the thousands of expatriates that will be out of work perhaps. I must admit I thought that we'd just see expat HR folk having their job titles changed to 'Advisor' (to the HR Manager). That is what has happened in other GCC states such as Oman and Qatar.

To aid the process the government have set up new departments to help drive the change and the required development, such as the Dubai Institute for Human Resource Development (DIHRD), and Tanmia are involved also.

Even though the cut off date for compliance is not until December 2007, already the effects are being felt. A well thought of Human Resources Director in Dubai resigned from his post as he faces the prospect of being replaced in January 2007. He felt the Ministry were being too vague abot the law and constantly moving the goal posts. Mainly as the HR professional in question didn't want to be on the jobmarket at the same time as 1000's of peers, he took the bold move of resigning his post.

His choices now are to become self-employed, move to another country, join a company in a free-zone, or to become a consultant.

I believe the logic is that companies with a UAE national HR leader are more likely to hire more UAE nationals, develop them. I also think the private sector is slightly to blame as had they done more to hire and develop national youth talent across the board, then this targeted change on one sector might not have been so dramatic. Only time will tell if the changes will be good for the economy, but I can't help feeling sorry for families who have move to this country and invested here; with their careers and their cash or savings.

The wider Middle East region will certainly benefit as many expereienced HR pro's will now be looking for employment outside of the UAE.

An article on te specific law changes and quotes can be found through the following press link:
http://www.gulfnews.com/indepth/labour/Emiritisation/10049590.html

eRecruitment Workshops for UAE National HR Folk
From my end, we've started educational seminars free to Emirati HR professionals to gain knowledge about best practice recruitment and to discuss regional/global trends in how companies are using the Internet and leveraging technology to benefit their HR strategies.

Initial response to the workshops has been very good. As the objective is closely in line with the Dubai governments own plans to develop HR knowledge amongst UAE natioanls, I did meet with the above mentioned DIHRD to see if they wanted to be involved in any way. It's been a month since our meeting and they're yet to reply; so that doesn't fill me with confidence in their understanding of the issues or the reality of the private sector. Never mind.

If you or a colleague are keen to join one of upcoming eRecruitment workshops in Dubai then please get in touch as you're more than welcome to join in. We're proud to be shaping the way people hire and in how the Internet is making recruitment add more value to the corporation.

Career Site Branding - does it really count?

Career branding or positioning is so critical today as recruiting has become global for all but the smallest firms. The last hires for my own company have come from the UK and Egypt, with candidates in the Far East and South Africa having been closely considered.

Career branding is however difficult for many companies to get their heads around. Recruiters to continue to spend many thousands of dollars on advertising for specific jobs, but little effort or budget goes to advertising the career brand or company career site.

One of the worlds largest recruitment networks (Reed) have just published results of a survey of 2,500 graduate jobseekers. The results should alarm the majority of companies in the Middle East and Africa as over a third actively switched brand loyalty (stopped buying your products!!) following a negative experience while applying for a job with that brand. When you think about it graduates are not the most fussy when it comes to brands, however they would most likely apply for work with brands that they previously admired or used. So for them to switch due to a bad candidate experience shows you just how bad some companies are at recruiting and that it costs them lost sales.

Worrying for the Recruitment Departments out there, the research revealed that 22% had turned down a job offer because they had been put off by an organisation's behaviour during the recruitment process.

Just to counter this and let you know how much a positive career brand can pull good candidates to your company, one of our clients who's career site is www.kojcareers.com received over 30,000 visitors in August 2006, and had in the region of 70 jobs posted at the time. They ensure the candidate experience is so well taken care of, and their brand well represented that they receive an average of 400 jobseekers per job with minimal advertising.

I am awaiting stats from their HR department on how much the quality (sales performance numbers) of their hires have increased which I'll write about later, but I would also wager that KOJ have received a few new customers into their retail stores as a result of how they handle recruitment.

$100,000 a year and you still lie in your CV?

In the online recruitment industry we're often thrown the line that "People lie when they apply online", or "how can you do psychometric online when you don't know who is filling in the answers".

Well yes it's true, people do extend the truth when applying for jobs, but this has nothing to do with the Internet or online application forms. Shock horror, people that lie can do so by fax, by post, by email and during interviews also.

Anyhow, I have just been discussing this with a Recruiter who pointed out some recent research they had read. Of all applications made by the financial services jobseekers, a worrying 38% of male applicants have at least one major false item on their CV. This is paper CV's and online CV's so the statistic doesn't refer to the method through which the CV were received, just that they lie in them.

Interestingly having a high income bracket doesn't prevent jobseekers from falsifying their career details. The income group with the largest number of discrepancies were earning between $105,000 to $115,000 per annum.

These stats are scary for the Middle East where most major employers and recruitment agencies don't often take up references.

The usual suspects for false info in a CV are; the employment dates, the job title, or levels of responsibility and success people experienced in their previous roles.

Would love to hear from any Recruiters who have caught out any interesting cheats, or any of you who are adopting thorough reference checking in your firms.

Ben