Exploring The Future of Work

Yesterday it was all over the tech websites, Facebook is reportedly testing a new resume feature called "work histories" that can help users share them privately.


Here are my thoughts about how this can play out:

1. Facebook is making an enterprise play. First with Workplace , the collaboration feature and then with  Facebook Jobs the job advertising feature. However, they haven't really done a great job marketing the jobs feature. If you see currently the number of jobs advertised in India is very low. As I write this is what is shown - 27 jobs in India (plus all of them seem to be with Facebook, not even sure it is used by other employers)
   
2. Facebook's big revenue features come from display advertising, sponsored posts for consumers. LinkedIn has that market cornered when it comes to employers - with their company pages and posts targeted to different kind of talent segments. So cracking this market is going to be tough for Facebook unless it invests in feet on the street to take on LinkedIn's Account Management, Sales and Customer Service. Facebook pages had talked about introducing a jobs/careers tab for adding to their business pages beginning with US and Canada, however I am not sure if this is in the priority for Facebook sales teams to pitch it to their customers
3. The big opportunity, Mobile recruitment. Where Facebook has a big edge over LinkedIn in the developing markets is the users who are solely on the platform as well as being actively engaged - the users for whom the internet is first mobile screen. These would be the blue collar workers which are not a strong point of LinkedIn. However to reach them Facebook would have to give the screen real estate to the product to make jobs a clear feature which might mean compromising on things like its news feed.
4. Microsoft and LinkedIn. Microsoft's acquisition of LinkedIn and its data getting integrated into Outlook and Office 365 is a moat that Facebook may find it difficult to cross.   
5. Facebook's perception problem. The biggest problem for Facebook is its perception of being a "social network" that is for friends and family. Whatever Facebook does in the jobs and careers space would run into that huge perception issue. At least in the white collar workforce, hence IMHO, the best bet for Facebook would be to concentrate on the blue collar workforce and focus on a "apply with Facebook" button with job sites to make the application process friction-less. The question is will they focus on it - at the cost of hurting their other revenue streams like digital advertising? And will they be able to convince the recruiting ecosystem like job sites and staffing agencies and make the products that they see value in? Time will tell, but very unlikely in my view. I hope I am proved wrong because LinkedIn can really do with some competition in this space.

So after I clicked on delete my account on LinkedIn I realised it wasn't deleted. It was still there and turning up in Google searches.

Then I got an email from someone in customer support saying my number of connections was too large for the system to delete it automatically, therefore a customer support person had to do it from the backend. And wanted to check if I was really sure if I wanted to delete it.

That made me pause.

Many friends had called me or chatted with me after my last blog post, and one thing stood out when someone said "what will people think if they can't find you on LinkedIn?"

That was when I realised how much online identities are a part of how people percieve us. Yes I have made judgements when I can't find people on Facebook and LinkedIn. I assume they are not who they claim to be .. so for that reason alone, I am not proceeding in deleting my LinkedIn account.

But I am not going to be active there. It has no use for me. However that doesn't mean it's not useful for you. People with niche skills, you have to be on LinkedIn.

Read Quote of Jon Bischke's answer to LinkedIn: Why hasn't anyone disrupted LinkedIn yet? on Quora

A couple of days ago it was my pleasure to moderate a roundtable organized by LinkedIn India and People Matters on "Employer Branding" and how social media is impacting it.

There were about 20 HR and Recruiting leaders from Mumbai at the event, and my co-moderator was Irfan Abdulla, LinkedIn India's Director of Talent Solutions.

Irfan started off the event by showcasing the first India Recruiting Trends survey they had done, along with their annual global survey. Some interesting facts that emerged were:

• 53% of respondents said they would hire more
• 50% of respondents said they would have a budgetary growth in recruiting.
• The biggest obstacles to attracting top talent is (a) Competition (b) Compensation (c) Location (d) Lack of awareness/interest in employment brand
• Recruiting leaders are concerned that their competitors will (a) Invest in employer branding (b) Improve their referral program (c) Invest in new recruiting tools
• Top last landing trends were (a) Utilising social and professional networks (b) Boosting referral programs (c) Upgrading employer branding
• 81% agreed that employer brand has significant impact on ability to hire great talent and 90% companies are increasing or maintaining investment in their employer brand.
• India is ahead of the rest of the world when it comes to regularly measuring employer brand.

So there was a healthy discussion on how the HR professionals present see these trends and what they are doing on the employer branding front. My insights were:

1. Most organizations have defined an Employee Value Proposition, however very few measure their external brand.
2. Most companies seem to be focusing on branding when it comes to B-School and Tech-Schools but very few seem to focus (or know) on employer branding for middle and senior levels
3. Understanding of how sites like Glassdoor and discussions on Twitter are shaping employer brand was very low.
4. About a quarter of the organizations in the room had some kind of social media policy.

Need help to leverage social media to understand what the perception of an organization's employer brand is? Contact me :)

If you want to go through the LinkedIn report here it is

Image via CrunchBase

Last week LinkedIn introduced a metric it calls the Talent Brand Index which it says is a measure of how desirable as an employer a company is.

The Index is calculated by the number of people who have actively engaged with an employer (comprised of who have researched the company, applied to jobs and who have followed a company on LinkedIn) divided by the number of people who are aware of the company (defined as people who have viewed the employees' profiles and who are connected to the employees) Multiplied by 100 this number gives the Talent Brand Index.

With this index LinkedIn is telling companies that their brand is shaped by employees, and if they actively engage on social media they can push up that numerator.

Recognizing that an Employment Brand is not useful without a context, LinkedIn can offer the TBI based on geography and compared to peer companies as well as by function. If you're a recruiter for an investment bank based in Mumbai you'd want to compare your TBI to other financial companies based in Mumbai and amongst Finance professionals.

LinkedIn has about 17 million Indian members and as more and more join the site, the TBI can become the way a HR leader can track the so far subjective measure of Employment Brand. I am sure that the formula of the TBI would evolve over time as LinkedIn adds more data points - hopefully from other third parties to determine how truly in demand an employer is. It is a great start anyway.

Here's more detail (pdf document) and LinkedIn's site for the TBI

Image via CrunchBaseLinkedin Launches Job Portal for Recent Graduates

The crowded jobsite market just got a new player. Business networking site Linkedin which is also used
by professionals for job hunting launched a job portal for Internships and Jobs for recently graduated
students. The interesting thing with this job portal is that it is not country specific . When one clicks on
the jobs listed it leads to the results of the Linkedin search of all Jobs listed there. So while the jobsite
might be marketed to students it can facilitate as a job search for any professional. What would be seen
now is how Linkedin would market this site to employers for employment branding initiatives. There
is a India sales team too – so it would be interesting to see how the traditional job portals counter this
niche threat from the networking site. Linkedin has been growing too. It crossed a 100 million members
worldwide, recently and India membership saw a 76% growth over the previous year too.

Top Level Exits in the IT sector

Bhaskar Pramanik, MD of Oracle India; Ravi Venkatesan, chairman of Microsoft India; Girish Paranjape
and Suresh Vaswani, joint CEOs of Wipro; and Ashok Soota, executive chairman of MindTree, have been
some of the recent top level exits in the Indian IT sector. iGate lured away Cognizant’s head of banking,
Debashis Chatterjee who is reportedly going to be its COO.

As the industry goes through a boom period organizations are grappling with turnover across the
ladder. Senior level exits however have different implications than middle or junior levels. Apart from
business disruptions and cost implications, such exits affect employee morale most. People always
wonder “why did that person go? Did he know something that we do not?” The way to handle such exits
is to communicate frequently with employees. Having a succession plan for all contingencies is of the
essence – even for top level executives.

90% of Indian workers ready to relocate

Almost nine-in-ten Indian employees are willing to move for the right job, with many even prepared to
relocate to another country or continent in order to secure a preferred position, according to the latest
survey from Kelly Services. The findings are part of the Kelly Global Workforce Index, which obtained the
views of approximately 97,000 people in 30 countries, including almost 2,000 in India.

A total of 89% of the respondents said that they were willing to move for the right job. Out of these,
39% of the respondents said that they were prepared to move within the country while 49% were
willing to relocate to another country or continent to secure a job of their choice.

One reason for this is that historically Indians have been a people who have migrated to far off lands to
earn and make a life since centuries. From semi-skilled to highly skilled, a lot of people look for better
options in other cities and countries. The familiarity with the English language enables Indians to move
to most English speaking countries – and high demand skills ensures that countries that need them roll
out the red carpet. Another reason why Indians are more willing to be mobile is that a majority of the
Indian working population is young and do not have encumbrances that might stop them from moving.

Primary school enrolments plunge.

While the government has been trying to popularize its efforts to send more children to school, enrolment
in primary classes across the country has, in actuality, dropped since 2007. Between 2008-09 and 2009-
10, enrolment in classes I to IV in Indian schools dropped by over 2.6 million.

While more data is not available, it would seem that the economic slowdown should be blamed. The
slowdown impacted industries that use semi-skilled and un-skilled workers , impacting their ability to
send their children to school.

Hopefully, with the growth in these sectors since last year these children will get back to school this year
and not be deprived of a future.

From the HR Blogs

The successfactors blog focuses on the Next Economy and what leaders should do to reduce the gap
between strategy and execution. One fact it shares Enterprise organizations are failing to monitor,

motivate and retain employees. Only 17% of organizations know all its top-performing employees and are
looking to develop them for future roles.

Read more here

Theresa Welbourne blogs at the TLNT blog that leaders should forget about trying to change culture and
instead work on the climate and habits

Read more here

At the Systematic HR blog, Dub Dubs shares that while HRIS implementations are focusing on Talent
and Analytics, in the recent past there has been renewed focus on core HR.

Read more here

Image via WikipediaLots of people keep talking about how "influence" cannot be reduced to mere numbers. How algorithms cannot capture the essence of why people are influenced and by whom.

Here's again how it was brought home to me. The folks at traackr who track the conversations on the social web around various topics, have listed me number 19 in the Public Relations 2.0 list. To be fair the break up of the score shows my "relevance" score to be a measly 10 - and the only reason it is there is because I tweet sometimes on the areas of intersection of Public Relations and Social Media. But still, me being on that list puts the system of such lists in question.

I mean, the list doesn't have heavy hitters in the PR domain from India, like Palin, Karthik S or Surekha Pillai, two of whom have much larger number of followers on Twitter than me, and one who blogs and tweets more about Public Relations than I do.

Ultimately, my advice to businesses who might be relying on such tools (others being Klout, Twitalyzer and Peerindex) to make decisions about online influencers - they are a good starting point to point to influencers, but even they can't be the top of the funnel. Human intervention is still needed to understand who the influencers are - and while its early days for the tools yet, the only way they can go is up.

It's great that blue chip HR Consulting firm - The Hay Group has blogged about Social Leaders and is heartening to know that concepts on Leadership in the Open Organization that I have blogged about in the past is being seen as mainstream enough by such firm. Hope conservative organizations - which have mostly followed the herd will now be convinced to move from the fence they have been sitting on and become more Open organizations a.k.a. Organization 2.0 (see my presentation - Why Organization 2.0?)

In the blog post Paul Bleier writes:

Thanks to the Social Media Revolution taking place, many organizations are starting to see clear value and benefit to becoming more open and less formal in their approach to engagement. For leaders within these organizations, championing such out-of-the-box thinking has not been an easy task due to the lack of discrete measures against success. Before receiving the necessary executive level buy-in to invest both time and money to operate within these online channels, demonstration of tangible bottom-line benefits were required. Today, social media ROI success stories and case studies are plentiful and provide compelling evidence for organizations to embrace openness and recognize the importance in promoting, developing and retaining the very best social leaders. Fueled by collapsing boundaries, increased competitiveness and demanding customers, social leaders have an uncanny ability to capture real-time market realties while effortlessly extracting hidden value from crowds using multiple online communication channels and common social media tools (such as blogs, Twitter, Facebook, etc).

A summary of these benefits included:

* clearer and more consistent corporate visions and strategies
* access to unexpected knowledge capital outside of the formal organizational structure
* increased stakeholder ownership and accountability
* improved corporate social responsibility.

When I began this research, Facebook was frowned upon as a waste of time, LinkedIn was solely thought of as a recruitment tool and the notion of a twittering CEO would have been laughed at. How the times have changed. No one has done it better than Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com who has amassed a Twitter following of 1.7 million users by transforming his organization into a well-oiled customer service machine that delivers happiness to employees and customers 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Using social media, Tony publicly shares the core values of his company as well as his leadership philosophies that have grown Zappos to $1 billion in gross revenue in just 10 short years. He is an exemplary social leader who models a culture of trust, love and respect for his devoted employees so that they can in turn apply the same principles for the betterment of the organization and the customers they ultimately serve.

And then there is Martha Stewart with her nearly two million Twitter followers and an official blog that has aided her in repairing her public image by extending her iconic brand deep into cyberspace. A relatively newcomer is the always charismatic Richard Branson, Chairman of the Virgin Group, who has over 400,ooo Twitter followers who tune-in daily for a dose of all things Virgin. Richard routinely tweets about the places he goes, the interesting people he meets and even drops hints about future promotions and new products and services scheduled to launch under the Virgin brand. Other present and past CEOs that have become strong social leaders worth following include: George Colony, CEO of Forrester Research, Nancy Lublin, CEO of DoSomething.org, Peter Aceto, CEO of ING Direct Canada, Bill Gates, Former CEO of Microsoft and Jack Welch, Former Chairman and CEO of General Electric.

The folks at MindWorks Global have come up with a great short crisp presentation which you can see at this site:
A Quick Guide to Twitter Job Searches

Personally I think organizations are not really using the potential of Twitter and Facebook for recruiting employees - and instead are focusing their energies on Linkedin.com (see this post on how Linkedin can fire up your career)

That makes sense - at least for now - but as Twitter and Facebook's popularity in India rises - and more and more people start conversing there organizations will be missing the trick if they don't tap their potential to reach the appropriate talent pool.

Some interesting recruiters you can follow on twitter are: @indiajobstweet @hrnext @priyachettyr @hrsouls @sarangbrahme @femmehire

Are you using Twitter to hire or search for jobs? What's your experience?

Leave your comments below.

Interesting article by @meridith on BusinessWeekSocial Networking Ever More Critical to Job Search Success quotes a survey by JobVite

social recruiting is beginning to eclipse traditional channels for sourcing candidates, such as job boards and third-party recruiters and search firms.

If you're looking for a job and not active on LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter (the three social networking websites most popular with employers, according to the survey), here are four reasons to join these sites and actively manage your profiles.

1. You'll have access to job opportunities at progressive, growing companies.

Companies that are hiring the most people in the shortest periods of time "are the ones who are more aggressively pursuing social recruiting," says Dan Finnigan, Jobvite's CEO. "Companies with the most growth opportunities are trying to get better, higher-quality candidates through social recruiting."

2. You'll have access to job opportunities first.

The Jobvite survey results show that employers prefer using social networking sites for recruiting because they make advertising jobs and sourcing candidates cheap and easy. Tweeting a position they need to fill, for example, doesn't cost a dime. For that reason, online social networks are among the first places employers advertise jobs.

3. Employers are increasingly using LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter to find and vet prospective employees.

According to Jobvite's social recruiting survey:

* 73 percent of respondents currently use online social networks or social media sites to support their recruiting efforts.
* 92 percent of respondents hiring in 2010 currently use or plan to recruit via social networks.
* 78 percent of respondents use LinkedIn for recruiting; 55 percent use Facebook (up 15 percent since over 2009); and 45 percent use Twitter (up 32 percent over 2009).
* One-third of respondents always check out candidates' social media profiles when vetting them.
* 58 percent of respondents have successfully hired candidates through social networking websites.

4. You may not find as many job ads on job boards or job opportunities through recruiters.

Some employers are shifting their recruiting activity away from traditional channels, such as job boards and third-party recruiters and search firms, as they deepen their engagement with social recruiting. Jobvite found that 36 percent of survey respondents say they plan to spend less money on job boards as the economy recovers. Slightly more (38 percent) will spend less on third-party recruiters and search firms as the recovery continues.